AFP

 A suicide bomber killed a prominent tribal leader and five other people in an attack southwest of Baghdad, police said on Saturday.

The bomber blew up a tanker truck rigged with explosives outside the home of Sheikh Lorens al-Hadhal in the Al-Nikhaib area of Anbar province on Friday night, Major Alaa al-Dulaimi said.

A former member of parliament, the sheikh was head of the powerful Aniza tribe, which has members in neighbouring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq.

The blast also wounded 14 people, Dulaimi said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suicide bombings are a tactic almost exclusively employed by Sunni extremists in Iraq, including jihadists of the Islamic State group.

IS spearheaded a lighting offensive that overran much of the Sunni Arab heartland north and west of Baghdad last June.

The country's powerful tribes are key to the government's efforts to retake and maintain control of areas currently held by the jihadists.

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