Iraq governor wounded by suicide bomber
24 February, 2013
BAQUBA: The governor of Iraq's restive Diyala province was wounded in a suicide car bombing on Saturday, while a provincial elections candidate was killed in another attack, police and a doctors said. The suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at Governor Omar al-Humairi's house in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, wounding him, killing two of his guards and injuring six more, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said. Humairi, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, became governor of Diyala, a province that suffers frequent attacks by militants, in September. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sunni militants linked to the Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq often target the security forces and government officials, and suicide bombings are a hallmark of the group. Also on Saturday, Sheikh Hassan Hadi al-Janabi, a provincial elections candidate in Babil province, was killed south of Baghdad by a magnetic "sticky bomb" along with two of his relatives, a police captain and a doctor said. While violence in Iraq has decreased significantly since its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain common. End.
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