Suicide Blast kills Senior Intelligence Officer in Northern Iraq

Suicide Blast kills Senior
Intelligence Officer in Northern Iraq

Brigadier General Aouni Ali, head of main intelligence
academy, two of his guards killed in bombing outside his home in Tal Afar, near
Mosul.


No group
claimed responsibility for blasts

Middle East Online MOSUL (Iraq): A
suicide bombing on Saturday killed a senior Iraqi intelligence officer and two
guards near the main northern city of Mosul, while other blasts left two more
dead, officials said.
The attacks were the latest in an uptick in
violence that comes as Iraq grapples with nearly two months of anti-government
protests and a political crisis.
Brigadier General Aouni Ali, the head of the
country's main intelligence academy, and two of his guards were killed in the
bombing outside his home in Tal Afar, near Mosul, police and a doctor
said.
Also north of Baghdad, a judge was killed by a
magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car in the village of Sulaiman Pak,
according to security and medical officials.
Ahmed al-Bayati, a Sunni Arab who is now a judge
handling civil cases, had previously received threats while he was working as an
anti-terror investigator, and had to pay kidnappers a $150,000 ransom after his
son was snatched last year.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed an army
lieutenant and wounded two other soldiers in Heet, northwest of the capital.

No group claimed responsibility for the blasts,
but Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda often target security forces and
government officials in a bid to push Iraq back to the sectarian bloodshed that
blighted it from 2005 to 2008.
Iraq has seen a rise in attacks in recent weeks,
with January the deadliest month since September, according to a tally.
Levels of violence remain markedly lower than
during the peak of the sectarian war in 2006 and 2007,
however.