SIDEBAR: Boy, 11, killed in Iraqi car bombing

Oct 27, 2009, 21:28 GMT

Tikrit, Iraq - An 11-year-old boy was killed late Tuesday while trying to remove a bomb from his father's car in a village north of Tikrit, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

'The boy's father, who works in the Ministry of Commerce, noticed a strange object attached to his car after returning from his work in Baiji,' 40 kilometres north of Tikrit, police Colonel Hassan Ahmed told dpa.

'The boy's father, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan, called the police to have them investigate the object, but the boy tried to remove it, causing the bomb to explode. The boy was killed, and the car was destroyed.'

The family lived in the village of al-Hajaj, 20 kilometres north of Tikrit.

A bomb-squad officer from Salah al-Din, site of Tuesday night's attack, warned that insurgents in the area were using homemade and Iranian-made explosives in a campaign to assassinate those working for the government.

The area around Tikrit is predominantly Sunni Muslim and was formerly Saddam Hussein's power base. After the 2003 US-led invasion, the ousted Iraqi dictator went into hiding in the region.

Attacks in the area have become more rare in recent years, though the region remains prone to sporadic, small-scale attacks.