Suicide bomber attacks funeral

A suicide bomber blew himself up among mourners at a funeral in Saddam Hussein’s hometown today, killing at least 10 people and injuring another 18, police said.

The attack against the mourners occurred in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The bomber mingled among the crowd in a funeral hall and detonated an explosive belt, police said.

Police Captain Laith Hamid, who gave the casualty figure, said the mourners were attending services for the father of a local council member, who was killed in the attack. Part of the ceiling collapsed and some people may have been trapped under the rubble, Hamid added.

The attack was the latest in a series of violent incidents in northern Iraq in recent days, testing the capabilities of Iraq’s US-trained security forces.

Earlier today Iraqi authorities lifted a partial curfew in Mosul, 225 miles north-west of Baghdad, which was imposed two days beforehand after police repulsed a series of insurgent attacks in which a police colonel was killed.

Iraqi authorities were heartened by the performance of the Iraqi police, who stood their ground and drove off the insurgents. In November 2004, the city’s entire 5,500-member police force fled during an insurgent uprising.

The US military had to send American troops and Kurdish fighters to regain control of the city, Iraq’s third-largest.

In wake of the Mosul fighting, the Defence Ministry said 62 people had been arrested since Saturday in a crackdown across northern Iraq. The curfew had been imposed in the eastern part of Mosul as police searched for the attackers.

Clashes broke out tonight in Baghdad between Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers near Hamza Square on the edge of Sadr City, police said. Two militiamen were killed and five combatants were wounded, including two Iraqi soldiers, police said.

At about the same time, gunmen ambushed a police patrol in south Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding five others, police said.

The clashes occurred as American reinforcements have begun patrolling in Baghdad to help stem the tide of sectarian violence. Much of the violence has been blamed on sectarian militias, and a showdown between US troops and the gunmen is likely in the coming weeks.

Gunmen in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, ambushed a convoy of Iraqi trucks, killing two drivers and setting their trucks on fire, police Captain Laith Mohammed said.

A sniper shot dead a government security guard in southern Baghdad, police said. Gunmen in Fallujah shot dead a Sunni preacher, Sheikh Ali Hussein al-Jumaili, after he resisted what appeared to have been a kidnap attempt, police said.

Police found the bodies of five men in Baghdad and one in the south-eastern city of Amarah. All had been shot, police said.

A US military statement said coalition forces killed one man during a raid north of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.

In the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, security forces fired warning shots to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who burned tyres and blocked roads to protest high fuel prices and poor living conditions.

Three people were injured in the protest in the town of Chamchamal.