Gunned down over breakfast

2005-02-23 12:57

Kirkuk - A police officer was gunned down over breakfast, two civilians died in a rocket strike and a car bomb killed two more people in a spate of attacks on Wednesday in northern Iraq, police and the United States army said.

"A police officer was killed and another wounded this morning at 06:00 when an unknown person opened fire on them in a restaurant in the centre of Kirkuk," said police Colonel Adel Zin al-Abidin.

Salman Abderahman was hit by nine bullets and his colleague was slightly wounded, he said, adding that two suspects had been arrested.

Two Iraqi civilians were killed and another seriously wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the car they were travelling in near Kirkuk, a key oil city, police said.

In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and a hotbed of insurgent activity, a car bomb killed two people and injured another 14, the US army said, providing no further details.

Also on Wednesday, police said an official from the Shiite Dawa party, whose leader Ibrahim Jaafari has been nominated candidate to become Iraq's next prime minister, was killed.

"Khalil Ali Shuker, a local representative from Dawa, was killed on Tuesday around 19:30 by a group of three men in the centre of Moqdadiyah," around 100km north of Baghdad, a police officer said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for Wednesday's attacks, but most assaults are carried out by Sunni Arab rebels opposed to the current democratic process in Iraq and to the presence of US-led foreign troops.

- AFP