U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

The sources said that a suicide car bomb exploded near a market in Balad on Sunday evening, in which 25 people killed & 40 injured. The car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the market in Balad, north of the capital. The bombing came as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad on a visit. He was in Baghdad to meet Iraqi government leaders & U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

It also came on the same day that insurgents killed five members of a neighborhood watch group that has been helping coalition forces fight al Qaeda in Iraq elements.

A U.S. military spokesman told sources that the Sunni fighters known as Sons of Iraq in U.S. military parlance were killed in Nineveh province, north of Baghdad. Five more fighters were wounded when insurgents ambushed their compound near Sinjar early Sunday morning. The fighters who also have been called popular committees, Concerned Local Citizens and Awakening Councils returned fire, killing 10 insurgents.

Capt. Stephen Bomar said that Insurgents also attacked a group of civilians in Nineveh province, killing two men and a child. The attack also left wounded six civilians, two infants among them. Stephen Bomar said that the attackers were inside a truck & opened fire on a crowd near the village of Romo. “This is an intolerable & disgusting act against the innocent people of Iraq that cannot be tolerated”, Bomar added.