The leader of a government-allied militia was seriously wounded on Saturday in an assassination attempt against him near the Iraqi city of Falluja, police and medical personnel said, according to dpa. Sheikh Naim Salih al-Halubsi, the leader of the local Sahwa, or "Awakening," Council, was being treated in Falluja General Hospital for wounds sustained when a bomb exploded as he passed through the district of al-Karama, some 15 kilometres east of the city, medical personnel said. Three of his bodyguards, including his son, were killed in the attack, police told the German Press Agency dpa. Falluja, 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, was the site of some of the worst fighting between Sunni insurgents and US and Iraqi forces until the government enticed armed groups to switch sides and form Sahwa Councils to maintain security with promises of weapons, training and money last year. Since then, the city has been relatively quiet, though a series of recent attacks targeting those who work with the government have raised concerns that insurgents may be regrouping in the area. On Friday, a bomb planted outside the home of a high-ranking police officer and former Sahwa leader killed his two young sons and wounded 11 other people, police said. That same day, a bomb planted in a football field killed one person and injured nine others. On Tuesday, police arrested three men on suspicion of kidnapping and torturing to death the 11-year-old son of a police officer in al- Saqlawiya, 12 kilometres north of Falluja. To the north of the country on Saturday, in Mosul, a roadside bomb killed one Iraqi policeman and wounded another as they patrolled the city's eastern neighbourhood of al-Zuhur, police there told dpa. In a separate incident, two other Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a bomb exploded as their patrol passed through Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad. Tensions in the province, one Iraq's most ethnically and religiously diverse, have increased in the weeks surrounding US soldiers' June 30 withdrawal from Iraqi cities and towns. At least four people were killed and 35 others were wounded on last week, when a car bomb exploded in the eastern Mosul neighbourhood of Kukjali, an enclave of the Iraqi Shabak minority. Following that attack, Hanin al-Qadu, who represents the Shabaks in parliament, blamed the attack on Kurdish Peshmerga militias and Kurdish parties. Saturday's attack followed a bombing Thursday in Tal Afar, just to the west of Mosul, which killed 35 people and left dozens of others wounded. Tal Afar is home to a concentration of members of Iraq's Turkmen minority. Turkmen political parties have been resolutely opposed to Kurdish ambitions for an independent state. The local government in Nineveh, controlled by Sunni Arab nationalists since January's provincial council elections, has vowed to rid Mosul's security forces of Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen. At the same time, lawmakers in the neighbouring semi-autonomous Kurdish region have passed a draft constitution that defines the borders of Kurdistan as including disputed areas currently in Nineveh and the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, to the south of the Kurdish region. Voters in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region will put the draft constitution to a referendum as part of parliamentary polls scheduled for July 25.
