An Iraqi judge and a former regime member were assassinated yesterday, as 13 people were wounded in car bombs in Kirkuk and in Baghdad, security sources said.
Judge Salem Mahmud Haj Ali was gunned down in Mosul along with his driver, said police and hospital sources in the city. He was at least the second judge killed in Mosul since last year.
South of Baghdad, two gunmen dressed as policemen killed Karim Kazimi, a former senior member of deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baath party, in Hindiyah near the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, said a spokesman for the local provincial authority.
"He had gone to a neighboring country after the fall and had just returned," Ghalib al-Daami said.
"He is accused of helping identify those who took part in the uprising," he said, referring to the Shiite revolt which erupted in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.
"He was probably killed by members of the families of victims who have grown tired of waiting for the trial of former regime elements," Daami said.
In other violence yesterday, eight Iraqis, including four soldiers, were wounded when a suicide car bomber blew himself up in the path of an army convoy near the entrance of the Northern Oil Co in Kirkuk, said Major General Shirku Chaker, the provincial police chief.
The city has seen stepped up violence since Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up near civil servants lining up to cash their paychecks outside a bank, killing at least 20 people.
In Baghdad, five Iraqi soldiers were wounded in a car bomb attack against their convoy, an interior ministry source said.
The soldiers have been taken hospitalized, the source said.
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