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| Eight killed, 10 policemen kidnapped in Iraq's Sunni heartland |
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 RAMADI (Reuters) - Suspected Sunni militants killed four state-backed Sunni fighters in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said, apparently viewing them as collaborators with government of a nation plagued by sectarian hatred.
The four “Sahwa” militia fighters were killed in an attack on their headquarters on the outskirts of Garma, 9 km (six miles) east of Falluja, a city in the western province of Anbar.
Gunmen also ambushed and kidnapped 10 Sunni policemen near Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni militant groups have been behind previous violence targeting security forces in a campaign to destabilize the Baghdad government, which they reject as illegitimate.
Sahwa or “Awakening” fighters are Sunni tribesmen who helped U.S. troops subdue Al-Qaeda in 2006. They are now on the government payroll and are often targeted by militants.
In other violence, tribesmen clashed with security forces and set four of their vehicles ablaze after a woman and three of her young children were killed in an army raid north of Ramadi.
Monthly death tolls are well below those of 2006-07, when they sometimes topped 3,000, but more than 700 were killed in April by a U.N. count, the highest figure in almost five years.
At least 72 people died in attacks on Friday, 43 of them in two bombings outside a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba.
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