Baquba, Iraq  - At least eight people were killed and seven injured when a bomb exploded in a market in the mostly Sunni town of Buhriz on Tuesday evening, medics and witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa.

Laith Mashan, the leader of the local Sahwa, or "Awakening," government-allied militia and two of his associates were killed in the blast, police told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

Some sources in the town, located 15 kilometres south of Baquba in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, said a suicide bomber had walked into a store where the three men were shopping. Others spoke of a car bomb parked outside the store.

Mashan, in his capacity as leader of the local Sahwa militia, had been responsible for the arrest of several high-profile al-Qaeda detainees, and had helped arrest Abu Omar al-Boghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella network of Sunni insurgent groups, police told Aswat al-Iraq.

The Sahwa militias were drawn from Sunni tribes, former insurgents and former Iraqi army officers enticed to ally with the government in exchange for promises of money, weapons, training and jobs with the Interior Ministry.

Iraqi and US security officials credit the militias with playing a significant role in reducing violence in the areas they have policed over the past few years.  dpa