Among the dead were Khaled al-Fahdawi, an MP from western Anbar province allied with the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, he said. Elderly men and children were also among the casualties AFP
A suicide bomber killed 28 people, including a member of parliament, and wounded 37 others at a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad on Sunday evening, an interior ministry official said “A suicide bomber entered Umm al-Qura mosque and blew himself up, killing 28 people and wounding 37,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Among the dead were Khaled al-Fahdawi, an MP from western Anbar province allied with the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, he said. Elderly men and children were also among the casualties. The Umm al-Qura mosque, located in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood, is the main headquarters of the Sunni Endowment, which is responsible for maintaining Sunni Muslim religious sites across Baghdad. The head of the Umm al-Qura mosque is Ahmed Abdulghafur al-Samarrai, who is reputed for his sermons against violent extremism. Sunday’s attack came towards the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, just days before the Eid festival that follows it. Violence is down across Iraq from its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common. A total of 259 people were killed in violence in Iraq in July, according to official figures, the second-highest figure in 2011. Elsewhere in Iraq, militants in military uniforms killed three people in a car at a fake checkpoint they set up west of the restive ethnically mixed city of Baquba, an Iraqi army colonel in the provincial security command center said. In another incident in Diyala province, of which Baquba is the capital, two policemen were killed when gunmen opened fire at their checkpoint in al-Saadiyah town. And in the main northern city of Mosul, a magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to a police car in the centre of the city killed a policeman and wounded four others, local police said. Additionally, two roadside bombs in the Bayaa area in southern Baghdad wounded two civilians, and another roadside bomb against a federal police patrol in the central Karrada district wounded one policeman and three civilians, according to the official. Three people were also wounded by two separate roadside bomb attacks in Zafraniyah and Shuala districts, the interior ministry official said. And two policemen were also wounded when explosives attached to a motorcycle blew up near a petrol station in town of Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of the capital.
