MOSUL, Iraq – A suicide bomber killed a senior Iraqi army intelligence officer and two bodyguards in a northern town Saturday after storming his well-guarded home. Suicide bombings are the hallmark of Al-Qaeda's local wing, Islamic State of Iraq, which aims to take back ground lost in its long battle with US and Iraqi forces. Insurgents tied to Al-Qaeda have stepped up bombings in a campaign of sectarian violence a year after the last US troops left the OPEC country. One bomber was shot outside the home of Brigadier-General Awni Ali, the director of the Defense Ministry's intelligence school, in the northern town of Tal Afar. But a second attacker managed to detonate his explosives. "Guards killed one suicide bomber, but when the brigadier general and his bodyguards went out another bomber ran among them and blew himself up," a local official said. Tal Afar is near the Syrian border, about 420 km north of Baghdad and just west of the volatile northern city of Mosul. Increasing sectarian violence has accompanied growing political unrest in Iraq as thousands of Sunni Muslims in western provinces rally against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, accusing him of marginalizing their minority sect. Violence is far from the sectarian bloodletting that killed tens of thousands in 2006-2007. But after the last US troops left in December 2011, insurgents have carried out at least one big attack a month. Last year, more than 4,400 people were killed, the first annual climb in Iraq's death toll in three years. Unrest and renewed violence are worsening fears the war in neighboring Syria could undermine Iraq's delicate sectarian and ethnic balance. – Reuters
