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Iraqi deputy PM injured in blast

Bodyguards of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubayi were being interrogated over a twin-bomb attack that kept the government's top Sunni Arab in hospital for a second day.

The brazen attack inside Zubayi's heavily guarded personal compound while he was praying on the Muslim day of rest has exposed the perilous security of even top-ranking officials and underscored tensions within the Sunni community.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he had ordered a full inquiry into the suicide and car bombing that killed nine people, including Zubayi's brother.

"We have ordered the interior ministry to conduct a detailed investigation and find who is behind the attack," he told state television.

"We have detained several of his security guards. Their interrogation is on," Brigadier General Qassim Musawi, spokesman of a massive security operation designed to quell the sectarian war engulfing Baghdad said.

The authorities were chasing after some clues that may lead to the "criminals who carried out this attack," he said without revealing how many guards were in custody.

Dhafter al-Ani, a member of parliament for the National Concord Front, the main Sunni bloc to which Zubayi belongs, charged that the suicide bomber came from the deputy prime minister's own security detail.

"The suicide bomber was one of his bodyguards and he was recruited by the Islamic State of Iraq. He was not related to Zubayi," he said.

The Islamic State, a Sunni insurgent coalition led by al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, posted a statement on the Internet claiming that it carried out Friday's bombing.

"We pray to God not to save the life of this inferior traitor who sold his religion and his people for a cheap return," it proclaimed on a Web site used by militant groups.

Suicide bombers struck across Iraq yesterday in a sharp upsurge in violence that killed more than 60 people.

In the worst attack, a man driving a truck packed with explosives blew it up outside a police station in Baghdad's volatile southern district of Dora, killing 20. The blast sent a large column of smoke into the air and rattled windows kilometers away in the center of the city.

Officers said the dead included 14 policemen and three detainees as well as three others working in the building. Another 26 were wounded. The blast caused major damage to the station, burying many victims in the rubble.

In another deadly bombing, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a sweet shop in the northern town of Tal Afar killing 10 people and wounding three, the town's mayor Najim Abdallah al-Juburi said.
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