Attacks kill 14 across Iraq, capping off another bloody month

A triple bombing struck the funeral of the son of an anti-Al-Qaeda tribal leader in a town northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, one of several attacks across the country that left 14 people dead, Iraqi officials said.

The attacks capped off a bloody month in the country. At least 659 Iraqis were killed in the past 30 days, according to the United Nations, a drop from October, but still one of the deadliest months in years.

The biggest blast on Sunday was at a funeral in Wajihiya, about 45 miles from the capital. The attack killed 11 and wounded 45. The funeral was for a local Sunni tribal sheik's son, who died a day earlier.

Police said the father was a member of Sahwa, which had joined forces with U.S. troops at the height of the Iraq war to fight Al-Qaeda. Iraqi troops and Sahwa fighters have been a favorite target for Sunni insurgents, who consider them to be traitors. It was not clear how the son died.

Also on Sunday, two policemen were killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in Baghdad's western suburbs of Abu Ghraib, said police and hospital officials.

In Fallujah, police said, gunmen shot dead Sunni cleric Khalid al-Jumeili, an organizer of the western city's Sunni protest camp, in a drive-by shooting.

Iraq has seen an increase in violence over the past few months, rivaling the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007.

The U.N. figures issued Sunday showed that 565 civilians and 94 security personnel were killed in November, compared to 979 reported killed in October. The U.N. statement said it may undercount the actual total.

U.N. mission chief Nickolay Mladenov expressed concern over the recent uptick in "execution-style" killings. Last week, Iraqi police found a total of 31 bodies in three separate places around Baghdad.

At the peak of sectarian fighting in the wake of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Sunni and Shiite militias regularly carried out tit-for-tat kidnappings and assassinations and left scores of corpses littering the streets.

The government has been criticized for not doing enough to address Sunni disquiet over what they see as mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led authorities.

The authorities, however, have trumpeted security operations and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki used a recent trip to Washington to push for greater intelligence sharing and the timely delivery of new weapons systems in a bid to combat militants.

The rise in violence comes ahead of general elections, scheduled to be held on April 30, the country's first parliamentary polls in four years.

Al Jazeera and wire services