Suspected al-Qaeda fighters have kidnapped a group of Iraqi women and children after battles with Sunni Arab militants in two villages Thursday that killed 32 people, police told Reuters.

Among those killed in the attacks was a village leader who had led his community in an uprising against al-Qaeda, witnesses and police said.
 
About 200 suspected al-Qaeda fighters raided two villages — Sheikh Tamim and Ibrahim Yehia — north of Baghdad in early Thursday morning after launching a mortar attack on the area, police said.

Twenty residents of the two villages were killed in the fighting along with 10 al-Qaeda fighters, Baquba police chief Brig.-Gen. Ali Delayan told Reuters.

Delayan said attackers escaped with eight women and seven children as hostages.

Fighters also exploded a bomb in Ibrahim Yehia at the house of Sheik Younis al-Shimari, destroying his home and killing him and one family member, witnesses said.

A police vehicle rushing to the scene crashed, killing two policemen, Diyala provincial police force officials said.

Armed men in the village gathered and drove the suspected al-Qaeda fighters back in a 30-minute gunbattle, witnesses told Associated Press.

"This attack will cause the uprising against them to spread to other villages," said a woman who was wounded in the attack but refused to give her name for fear of retribution.

Al-Qaeda has been forced to fight a rearguard action against many of its former allies in the Sunni community, who have risen against the organization because of its brutality and attempts to impose its austere version of Islam.

The uprising began spontaneously in Anbar province, once a bastion of the Sunni insurgency in the west of Iraq, and has spread to Diyala province and some Baghdad neighborhoods.

With files from the Associated Press