A suicide bomber killed 38 government-backed Sunni paramilitary members and wounded some 56 others at a military base in a town just south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Wednesday, a police source said.

The suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a crowd of Sahwa paramilitary members who were gathering to collect their salaries at the entrance of a base of an army brigade in the town of Madain, some 30 km south of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The attack came as the Iraqi government is trying to revive Sunni paramilitary groups after the advance of the Islamic State (IS) militant group, an al-Qaida offshoot, in large parts of several predominantly Sunni provinces in northern and western Iraq in June.

The Sahwa group, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of armed groups, including some powerful anti-U.S. Sunni insurgent groups who turned their rifles against the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.

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