Professor assassinated, Iraqi soldier injured in Baghdad (1st Lead)

Aug 25, 2008, 9:44 GMT

Baghdad - Unknown gunmen killed a university professor in Iraq in west Baghdad early Monday, while a bomb targeting an army patrol injured an Iraqi soldier in the area, police and witnesses said.

Police found the body of Professor Khaldoun Sabry in in the capital's Yarmouk district. He was handcuffed and had gunshot wounds and bruises all over his body, police officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Killings and abductions of university professors and students have escalated in the last couple of months.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi soldier was injured when an explosion hit an army patrol in west Baghdad's Mansour district on Monday, witnesses told dpa.

Several shops were damaged in the explosion, according to the witnesses.

A 13-year-old would-be suicide bomber still wearing an explosives vest turned herself over to police on Sunday, the same day that 25 people were killed in a further suicide bombing, the US military said Monday.

The military said the girl let herself be escorted away by police in the city of Baquba, north-east of the capital Baghdad, and that she then led the officers to another explosive vest.

The US military had initially reported that police had detained two suicide bombers, but later said that only the 13-year-old girl was arrested.

Baquba is capital of the restive Diyala province, where the US Army has set up a separate female anti-terrorism unit in the battle to try to thwart suicide bomb attacks by women.

Meanwhile the death toll in Sunday's suicide bombing west of Baghdad had risen to 25, Arab media reports said Monday. Initial reports had put the figure at 21 dead.

In addition, 30 people were wounded when the attacker detonated his explosives vest during a banquet thrown by a family celebrating a relative's release from prison, a police source who spoke on condition of anonymity told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The attack took place in the Abu Ghraib district, 30 kilometres west of Baghdad.