The death toll rose to at least 30, with 39 others wounded as a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral in Baghdad's eastern neighborhood of Zaiyounah on Tuesday, an Interior Ministry source said.

 

The source on condition of anonymity previously said five mourners were killed and 15 others were wounded.

 

According to the source, the suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up in the afternoon at a funeral in Zaiyounah neighborhood held for an Iraqi army officer who sustained a wound in a car bomb attack last week in central Baghdad.

 

His brother is a colonel in the Iraqi army.

 

The bloody suicide bombing attack came as the Interior Ministry reported earlier in the same day that the death toll of Iraqis killed in violence across the country dropped to its lowest level during December.

 

The data compiled by the ministry showed that a total of 1,153 people were killed across Iraq, including some 244 in Baghdad alone.

 

Observers attributed the low level of casualty to the US troops surge, the rifts that emerged between the Sunni Iraqi insurgents and the al-Qaida network in Iraq and the ceasefire declared by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for his Mahdi Army militia.

 

However, the US military warned that the al-Qaida members are still active and intend to stir up sectarian violence.

 

Moreover, Iraq has failed to achieve tangible achievement in national reconciliation, which could endanger the improved security situation.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 2, 2008)