Bomb kills mother, wounds daughter in northern Iraq (Roundup)

Sep 14, 2009, 15:00 GMT

Baghdad - A woman out shopping with her young daughter was killed when a bomb exploded in downtown Mosul on Monday, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

The two were shopping for food for to prepare for Iftar, the traditional evening meal breaking the daily fast during the Muslim month of Ramadan, when a bomb apparently intended for a passing police patrol exploded metres away.

The woman was killed instantly, and her daughter was badly wounded and taken to hospital, police said. The passing policemen were not harmed.

Monday's fatal attack was the latest in a near-daily series of deadly bomb blasts in the city, which is one of the most ethnically diverse in the country.

On Sunday night, Colonel Mohammed al-Wakaa, head of VIP protection for the Mosul police department, narrowly survived an assassination attempt against him. Two of the colonel's bodyguards were injured when a roadside bomb targeted his convoy just north of the city, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Violence continued in the centre of the country on Monday.

A bomb planted near a cafe in the town of Iskandariyah killed one person, police there told dpa. Four people were injured and were admitted to a nearby hospital in the town, roughly 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The bomb appeared to be retaliation for a police raid that on Sunday netted 21 men, many of them wanted for links to al-Qaeda, in connection with a string of recent bomb attacks and plotting further attacks in the area.

Seven of the suspects were captured in a raid in Iskandariyah. The other 14 were arrested in Hilla, 60 kilometres to the south.

Those arrests, in turn, followed twin bombings that on Thursday killed two people in a market in Hilla and injured at least 21. Witnesses said the bombings followed a gunfight between militants and police.