Nine killed in suicide attack in western Iraq (2nd Roundup)

Sep 7, 2009, 13:36 GMT

   Baghdad - Nine people were killed and 13 injured Monday when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, police said.

   The attack took place near a checkpoint on the highway near the northern approach to the city. Four policemen are among the killed.

   Ramadi is 118 kilometres to the west of Baghdad.

A high-ranking police official and one of his sons were killed when a bomb planted under their car exploded in Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Nineveh. Two other of the officer's sons were injured in the blast, police reported.

Also in Mosul, a woman and her grandson were shot dead on Sunday evening.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, unknown assailants overnight killed an employee of the state gas company. The victim belonged to the ethnic minority Turkmen, according to police.

In Karbala, south of Baghdad, the body of a murdered traffic policeman was found, the Yaqen news agency reported, while in Baquba north of the capital a civilian was killed by a magnet bomb attached to his motorcycle.

Meanwhile, Nineveh provincial governor Athiel al-Nujaifi said he would no longer tolerate the presence of the Kurdish militias in Mosul. The presence of the Peshmerga militias as well as members of the Kurdish secret service Asaish 'were having a negative effect on the security situation,' he said.

Following the victory of the al-Nujaifi, an Arab, in the provincial elections in January, Kurdish politicians have threatened to support the annexation of the majority Kurdish province to the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq.

In the city of Hilla, around 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, some 250 demonstrators, including local politicians and Muslim clerics, called for a break of ties with Syria.

The Iraqi government in August claimed that Syria was providing refuge to two Iraqis thought responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in Baghdad.

Syria has responded that Iraq had so far provided no proof of the guilt of the two men, and therefore it will not extradite the suspects.