IRAQ: The deputy governor in the violent northern Iraqi city of Mosul has survived an assassination attempt which he said killed one of his bodyguards and wounded two, including his brother.
It was one of a number of bloody incidents in an area where tensions have been running high since Sunni Arab rebels routed police two weeks ago, forcing US troops to hasten back to Mosul from their assault on the Sunni bastion of Falluja.
Gunmen ambushed a convoy of Kurdish militiamen as they travelled to Mosul, killing three and wounding nine, hospital sources in the nearby Kurdish mountain city of Arbil said.
US commanders have rushed Kurdish units in to help them police Mosul, causing resentment among Arab residents who fear the Kurds, who have enjoyed autonomy from Baghdad since the Gulf War, have territorial ambitions on their mixed city.
The deputy governor of Nineveh province, Mr Khasro Gouran, a Kurd, said he was driving yesterday from his office in the governorate building when gunmen opened fire on his motorcade.
"One of my bodyguards was killed and two were wounded. One of them is my brother," he said, after a Reuters reporter witnessed the shooting in the centre of Iraq's third city. The governorate was hit by mortars last Thursday in an attack which killed one of the provincial governor's guards. His predecessor was assassinated in July.
A US military spokesman in Mosul said that at the same time as the attack on the deputy governor, a convoy of special police commandos was also fired on, wounding one trooper.
US forces responded, killing three guerrillas, Lieut Col Paul Hastings said. Police commandos were also brought in after most of Mosul's US-trained police force disintegrated in the face of the Sunni Arab insurgency this month.
Lieut Col Hastings added that five unidentified bodies had been found in western Mosul on Wednesday. More than a dozen bodies, some of them headless or otherwise mutilated, have been found in recent days.
Some appear to be the remains of Iraqi police and troops, including Kurdish militiamen, who have been seized by rebels. Some Sunni Arab groups, including one led by Jordanian al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have admitted responsibility for attacks on Kurds and Iraqi security forces.
In another northern city, the oil centre of Kirkuk, gunmen opened fire on National Guard soldiers late on Tuesday, killing one guardsman and a civilian, the US military said in a statement. The military said soldiers had stopped to help the civilian with his car when gunmen drove past and fired at them.
Two Iraqi National Guards were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their car in the northern town of Duluiya, police said. A man and his young son were killed during clashes in nearby Samarra, they said.
In an attack in Baghdad early yesterday, a suicide bomber detonated his car near a US convoy on the airport road, but only the bomber was killed and no troops were wounded, police at the scene said. - (Reuters)