Iraq governor protests son's death, MP house blown up (Roundup)

Jul 21, 2008, 14:43 GMT

Baghdad - An Iraqi provincial governor stopped all work in his office on Monday until an inquiry is conducted into the killing of his son and nephew by US troops, while an Iraqi lawmaker blamed an attack in which his Baghdad home was blown up on 'sectarian killers.'

US troops killed Sunday the son and the nephew of the governor of the northern Iraqi province of Salahaddin, Hamad Mahmoud.

According to the provincial authorities, US forces raided the house of Mahmoud's sister-in-law in Bayji, 240 kilometres north of Baghdad, and killed the governor's son and his nephew.

But the US military said its troops were conducting a search operation for an al-Qaeda suspect in a house in Bayji and found two armed men.

The troops killed the men in self-defence, the military said.

In Baghdad, armed men blew up the house of Iraqi lawmaker Mithal al-Alusy. There were no fatalities in the explosion, as the house was empty at the time, but it was extensively damaged, security sources said.

The Sunni Muslim lawmaker, who leads the secular Iraqi Nation Party, accused 'sectarian killers' of carrying out the attack.

Al-Alusy courted controversy when he visited Israel in 2004 while a member of the then interim Governing Council, which prompted the council to remove him from his post.

The lawmaker has escaped several assassination attempts, including one in which his two sons were killed four years ago. He has lived in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone ever since.

Separately, attackers assassinated a clan chief, Abdel-Ghafar Abdullah, while he was on his way to a national reconciliation meeting in Baquba in the restive Diyala province, security sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Also in Diyala, two police volunteers from the so-called Awakening Councils were killed and four were injured when gunmen attacked a council centre in a village in the province.

The Awakening Councils are US-backed tribal police units formed to fight al-Qaeda militants in Iraq.