A suicide bomber apparently targeting a meeting of U.S.-allied Sunni sheiks penetrated layers of security and blew himself up in a hotel lobby on Monday, killing four tribal leaders and at least eight others, police reported. The sheiks were associated with the Anbar Salvation Council, which had taken up arms to help drive members of al-Qaeda in Iraq from the western province of Anbar.
The attack was among a surge of five suicide and other bombings Monday that killed at least 45 people across Iraq.
In another incident, the U.S. command reported a U.S. soldier shot to death Monday in south Baghdad or its outskirts.
According to a police official, cited by the AP, a man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby of the Mansour Hotel, approached the reception desk and detonated his bomb. The high-rise hotel, on the banks of the Tigris River, houses the Chinese Embassy and some media organizations. A number of Iraqi parliament members also stay at the Mansour.
The four tribal leaders killed were identified as former Anbar governor Fassal al-Guood, sheik of the al-Bu Nimir tribe, Sheik Abdul-Azizi al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh al-Assafi and Col. Fadil al-Nimrawi, both of the al-Bu Nimr tribe. Three of al-Guood's guards also were killed, a police officer said.
Along with the 12 dead at the hotel, at least 21 people were reported injured. The victim Al-Guood, a former Anbar governor, resided at the hotel, police said. A noted Iraqi poet, Rahim al-Maliki, also died, said Iraqi Media Net, the government organization on whose television network al-Maliki appeared.
The attack was part of a surge of suicide bombings Monday.
A suicide bomber driving a fuel tanker killed at least 10 people and injured 18 in an attack on a police headquarters in Iraq's northern oil city of Baiji, police said on Monday. The bomber activated his vehicle next to blast walls outside the police building in Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, police captain Ghazwan al-Janabi told Reuters. Most of the building was destroyed and prisoners and police were among the dead and wounded.
About 45 minutes later, another suicide car bomb went off at a joint U.S.-Iraqi army checkpoint in central Siniyah, nine miles west of Beiji, killing two Iraqi troops and wounding three others, an Iraqi army officer reported.
Elsewhere, a suicide car bomb attack killed at least eight people and injured 31 in the Iraqi city of Hilla on Monday, police said. They said the attack took place outside the governor's office in the heart of the city, located 100 km south of Baghdad. One witness said the car blew up at the fence of the governor's compound. Another said the bomber blew up his vehicle at a checkpoint outside.
In other violence, two mortar rounds Monday morning hit Baghdad's Fadhil district, a Sunni enclave in the central city, killing two civilians and injuring three others, police said.
Another bomb was in a parked car that exploded in the center of the northern city of Mosul, killing one civilian and wounding 20 others, police Brig. Mohammed al-Wakaa said. He said there were no police or military targets at the site.
In the southern city of Basra, the body of a kidnapped Iraqi army intelligence officer, Lt. Col. Faris Mohammed of the 10th Division, was found Sunday in the al-Fursi district, it was reported Monday by a British military spokesman in Basra. Mohammed had been seized from his car on Saturday while being driven from nearby Shaibah to Basra.
© 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
