Bombs target city official, civilians in Iraq

[August 13, 2008]  BAGHDAD (AP) -- A suicide truck bomber targeted the mayor of a town near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, while another car bomb struck civilians elsewhere in northern Iraq, officials said.

The suicide bomber was driving a pickup truck that blew up near the convoy carrying Abdul-Karim Ali Nsaif, the chief administrative official of Multaqa, a Sunni town about 20 miles (35 kilometers) west of Kirkuk, the U.S. military said.

Nsaif was on his way to work when the blast occurred, wounding him and three of his guards, said Kirkuk police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir.

Multaqa was known as the first place in the volatile area to form an awakening council, a U.S.-allied Sunni group that turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, residents said.

A bomb in a parked car also struck a local market in the Qayara area south of the northern city of Mosul, killing at least two people and wounding five, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

Mosul, is the center of U.S.-Iraqi military operations aimed at clearing the area of insurgents.

The attacks came a day after another suicide bomber blasted an Iraqi convoy in Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, killing two people but narrowly missing a provincial governor and the Iraqi army commander in charge of military operations in Diyala province.

The U.S. military initially said the bomber was a woman but later said the attack was carried out by a man dressed as a woman. Iraqi soldiers spotted the suspect and shot him, causing the vest to detonate, the military said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government on Monday had announced a weeklong suspension of military operations in Diyala to give militants a chance to surrender.

Diyala, stretching northeast from Baghdad to the Iranian border, has proven among the most difficult of Iraq's 18 provinces to pacify, in part because of its complex mixture of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Many Sunnis in Diyala and other northern areas feel disenfranchised. Shiites hold a disproportionate share of power, including the governorship, because many Sunnis boycotted the last provincial election, in January 2005.

A bill to hold new provincial elections failed to win parliamentary approval this month because of a dispute over power-sharing in the northern Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk.

Al-Maliki launched a military operation in Diyala last month, hoping to replicate successes against Shiite and Sunni militants in Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and the northern city of Mosul.

[Associated Press; By HAMID AHMED]

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