BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament speaker narrowly escaped an attack in his hometown yesterday, while 21 militants died when a car bomb they were readying mistakenly went off, officials said.
A convoy carrying parliament speaker Osama Al Nujaifi, Iraq’s most senior Sunni Arab politician, was hit by a roadside bomb in the main northern city of Mosul, his office said.
One of Nujaifi’s bodyguards was wounded, a police captain and a medical source said, but the speaker himself escaped unharmed.
Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh province, where Nujaifi’s brother Atheel is governor, is one of Iraq’s most violent areas, with attacks regularly targeting security forces, government officials and civilians.
Also north of Baghdad, a car bomb mistakenly went off in a militant compound, killing 21 insurgents including a suicide bomber, an anti-Qaeda militia leader and a police officer said.
The group were filming a propaganda video of the would-be suicide attacker when a technical glitch set off the car bomb in the Jilam area south of Samarra, according to Majeed Ali, the head of the Sahwa militia force in the city, and a police officer.
Jilam, a mostly rural farming area just south of the mostly-Sunni city of Samarra, has long been an insurgent stronghold.
The blast went off within a compound in the area, Ali and the police officer said.
Elsewhere, attacks in Baghdad and the nearby towns of Mussayib and Balad left five people dead, while three militants were also killed in clashes with security forces.
More than 1,000 people were killed nationwide last month, according to government data.
AFP
