A teenage gunman went on the rampage in a Baghdad mosque on Friday, killing a Sunni Muslim MP and four other people in a grenade and gun attack, Iraqi officials and witnesses said. Another 12 people were wounded and the gunman, who witnesses said appeared to be around 15 years old, was killed as he tried to flee the scene. In two other attacks, one in Baghdad and the other northeast of the capital, three people, including a teenage girl, were killed and 11 wounded, two days after Iraq's bloodiest attack since May 20. “A young man entered the mosque, shot down the MP and his bodyguard, and then threw a grenade that killed three people and wounded 12,” an interior ministry official said. The slain lawmaker was identified as Harith Al-Obaidi of the Iraqi Islamic Party, part of the National Concord Front. The attack occurred in the Al-Shawaf mosque in Al-Yarmuk, western Baghdad, after Friday prayers, which Obaidi was leading, on the Muslim holy day of the week.Obaidi, born in 1966, was deputy chairman of parliament's human rights committee and on Thursday had called for an independent inquiry into torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq's prisons. Friday's attacks come less than three weeks before the June 30 withdrawal of US troops from Iraq's urban centers, as part of an accord between Baghdad and Washington which will see all US combat troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki warned on Thursday that insurgents and militias would likely step up their attacks in the coming weeks in a bid to undermine confidence in Iraq's own security forces. Though violence has dropped markedly in Iraq in recent months – May saw the lowest Iraqi death toll since the US-led invasion of 2003 – attacks remain common, particularly in Baghdad and the restive northern city of Mosul. Earlier on Friday, two people were killed and 10 wounded in a bomb attack targeting civilians on a main street in the mainly Shiite area of Baghdad Al-Jadida (New Baghdad) in the east of the capital, a police source said. Recent attacks in the capital have mainly targeted Iraq's majority Shiite community, prompting fears of efforts by Al-Qaeda fighters to reignite the sectarian violence that swept the country, killing tens of thousands of people. April saw a string of deadly bombings in Shiite and mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad that were reminiscent of attacks that occurred at the height of sectarian fighting in 2006. At the time, the bombings triggered reprisal attacks which saw thousands of mostly Sunni men abducted, tortured and executed but the latest wave of bombings has not sparked sectarian retaliation. In another attack, gunmen raided an Iraqi soldier's home in the town of Baladruz in Diyala province and killed his 17-year-old daughter, a security source said, adding that the mother was seriously wounded. It was not immediately clear if the soldier was at home during the attack in Diyala, which remains one of Iraq's most dangerous areas. Friday's violence came two days after a car bomb attack on a Batha market.
