Islamic mystics targeted in suicide bombing

At least 10 people, including a suicide bomber, were killed in an overnight suicide bombing in a remote village north of Baghdad, officials said today.

The suicide car bomber targeted a gathering of followers of the mystic Islamic Sufi movement, killing at least nine Iraqis and wounding 12 in Yethrib, a remote village near Balad, north of Baghdad, hospital Dr Faiz Shawqi said.

“I was among 50 people inside the tekiya (Sufi gathering place) practising our rites when the building was hit by a big explosion,” said Ahmed Hamid, one of the Sufis.

Sufis are regarded as heretics by Islamic extremists believed responsible for suicide bombings.

Early today, gunmen killed Razzouq Mohammed Ibrahim, an Iraqi contractor in charge of renovating a mosque in western Samarra, and stole his car, police Lieutenant Qassim Mohammed said.

Two Iraqi civilians, including a child, were killed when their car swerved into a US Bradley fighting vehicle near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, early today, the US military said.

A suicide car bomber wounded nine Iraqi soldiers and two women after attacking an Iraqi army checkpoint near the US 42nd Infantry Division base in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, police Captain Hakim al-Azawi said.

He added police also recovered the body of a man from the Tigris river. He had been shot in the head.

Several car bombs targeted US military convoys in the capital today, one of which wounded six Iraqi civilians in western Baghdad, police Captain Mohammed Abbas said.

Another blast damaged an American tank, but caused no US casualties, the military said.