Gunmen attack home in north Iraq, kill 3 women

[April 19, 2011]  SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) -- Gunmen stormed a house in a northern, ethnically mixed city in Iraq, killing three women who lived there, police said Tuesday.

Police Col. Sherzad Mofaly said it's not clear why the women were targeted in the attack late Monday in the city of Kirkuk.

The women were Shiites from southern Iraq who recently moved to the city located 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Two of them were sisters -- a teacher and a a lawyer, Mofaly said. The third woman was a relative.

Ethnic tensions have long simmered among Arabs, both Shiites and Sunnis, and Kurds in Kirkuk.

Separately, a senior Education Ministry official was killed Tuesday by a bomb that was hidden on his car in Baghdad, according to police and hospital officials.

Abdul-Amir Hussein was headed to work from his home in the mixed neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad when he died in the latest assassination extremists have launched against Iraqi government officials.

Also in Baghdad, three policemen and two bystanders were wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Tuesday. The bomb was planed near a security checkpoint outside Iraq's Finance Ministry.

In other developments, local lawmakers in Basra -- Iraq's second-largest city located 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad -- elected on Tuesday a new governor for a job that had been vacant for nearly two months.

Dr. Khalaf Abdul Samad, a member of the Dawa Shiite political party that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki leads, replaces former Gov. Sheltagh Aboud al-Mayahi, who resigned Feb. 25 after protesters accused him of rampant government corruption in Basra.

Al-Mayahi also was a Dawa party member.

[Associated Press; By YAHYA BARZANJI]

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