A tribal police leader escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a car bomb targeted his motorcade in Kirkuk, a police source said.
Abdel Karim Nasief, director of Multaqa district, was west of Kirkuk when an bomb-laden car struck his motorcade, injuring him and three of his security men, a police source said.
Tribal police, also known as “Awakening Councils,” are US-backed Sunni units formed to fight militants from the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq.
On Tuesday, a female suicide bomber blasted a convoy north of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding seven, but narrowly missing a provincial governor in the second suicide attack by a woman in Diyala Province in as many days.
Governor Raad Rashid al-Tamimi ordered an indefinite curfew in Diyala’s provincial capital of Baqubah, where the attack occurred.
It happened a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government announced a weeklong suspension of military operations in Diyala to give militants a chance to surrender. Some 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and police launched a major push against Al-Qaeda and other insurgents in Diyala on July 29.
Al-Tamimi and the commander of Iraqi ground forces, General Ali Ghaidan, were heading to a meeting of the provincial council in Baqubah when the woman detonated her explosives as the vehicles approached, US and Iraqi officials said.
Neither the governor nor the general was injured, they said.
The attack could have been more devastating, but the attacker triggered her explosives prematurely — possibly because she feared guards had spotted her, officials said.
On Monday, a female suicide bomber struck a checkpoint at a market in Baqubah, killing one policeman and wounding 14 other people, including nine police.
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