At least 6 killed, 15 wounded in Iraq suicide bombing (Roundup)

Apr 22, 2009, 21:03 GMT

Baghdad - At least six people were killed and 15 others were wounded Wednesday when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a Sunni mosque northern Baghdad, a police source said.

The source told the German news agency dpa that the blast occurred right before the evening prayer in al-Kholafa mosque in al-Duluiya district, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad. The mosque was severely damaged.

'It seems that the suicide bomber was targeting the mosque's imam, Nadhim al-Jubouri, who was not inside the mosque at the time,' said the source, who said al-Jabouri was likely targeted 'because he sympathizes with the Awakening Council.'

Other sources described al-Jubouri as the leader of the local unit of the Awakening Council. Iraq's Sunni tribe members, collectively known as Awakening Council, have been enlisted to enforce security in several parts across the country.

Awakening Councils, which consist of around 99,000 Sunni tribe members, have succeeded in crushing al-Qaeda and expelling a large number of the terrorist network's fighters over the last two years.

Members of the council have since become a constant target for al- Qaeda attacks.

Earlier Wednesday, a group of armed men abducted a senior judge from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Fayadh Yassin Badrani, a senior justice in Kirkuk's top court, was surrounded by five gunmen as he left his home in the al-Khadra district of the city, Colonel Mohammed Rashid Ghazi of the Kirkuk police told dpa.

Ghazi said that police and the Iraqi army were combing the area for the judge and his abductors. It was unclear whether the abductors had political motives or were seeking ransom.

Rich in oil reserves, Kirkuk is among the most ethnically diverse cities in Iraq but is primarily divided between Kurds, many of whom hope to make the city the capital of an independent Kurdish state, and Sunni Arabs, many of whom moved to the city as part of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's attempts to 'Arabize' the city.

The city is at the centre of related, simmering disputes between Baghdad and the government of the quasi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, over the division of revenue from oil reserves near the city and over elections tentatively scheduled for late 2009.

The issues proved too thorny to resolve ahead of January's provincial council elections, and Kirkuk and surrounding al-Tamim province did not participate in the polls.