|
Blasts Kill Senior Iraq Intelligence Officer, Four Others
[An Nahar] Back-to-back suicide kabooms in northern Iraq killed the head of the country's intelligence academy and two of his guards on Saturday, officials said, in the latest in a surge in nationwide violence.The blasts, the deadliest in a series of bombings that left five people dead across Iraq, come as the country grapples with nearly two months of anti-government protests and a political crisis. The first bomber went kaboom!in front of Brigadier General Aouni Ali's home in Tal Afar, north of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... , killing two of his guards including his brother Murad and wounding four others. A second attacker killed the general himself, according to a colonel in the town's police force. Ali, a Shiite Turkman, commands the Storied Baghdad Intelligence Academy, the main school for the country's intelligence service. His house in his hometown of Tal Afar had minimal security, with a small guard shack at the gate, the colonel said. Though lower-ranking officers and enlisted personnel are typically the victims of attacks on Iraqi security forces, senior officers including generals have also been targeted and killed. No group grabbed credit for the violence. But Sunni hard boyz linked to al-Qaeda often target security forces and government officials in a bid to erode confidence in the government and push Iraq back towards bloody the sectarian conflict of 2006-2007. Also north of the capital on Saturday, a judge was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car in the village of Sulaiman Pak, according to security and medical officials. Ahmed al-Bayati, a Sunni Arab who is now a judge handling civil cases, had previously received threats when he worked as an anti-terror investigator, and had to pay kidnappers a $150,000 ransom after his son was snatched last year. Elsewhere, a roadside kaboom killed an army lieutenant and maimed two soldiers in Heet, northwest of the capital. Posted by: Fred 2013-02-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=362490 |