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Turkish consul-general survives attack in northern Iraq | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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An Iraqi soldier stands guard amid tight security measures by Iraqi security forces that sealed off the roads around a protest site in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)


An Iraqi soldier stands guard amid tight security measures by Iraqi security forces that sealed off the roads around a protest site in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

An Iraqi soldier stands guard amid tight security measures by Iraqi security forces that sealed off the roads around a protest site in Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday, August 31, 2013. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

London, Asharq Al-Awsat—The Turkish consul-general in Iraq survived a bomb attack on his convoy on the Mosul-Erbil road in northern Iraq on Monday, as several assassinations of state officials were reported across the country.

A spokesman for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said an explosive device detonated while the consul-general’s convoy to Iraq was passing. No injuries were reported. The convoy was on the way to Erbil from Mosul in northern Iraq when the incident took place.

The spokesman said: “The foreign minister spoke to the consul-general and he is in good health. We are still investigating to find out who carried out the attack and whether the consul-general was targeted.”

The attack on the Turkish convoy was only one of a string of alleged assassination attempts across the country over the weekend.

A spokesman for the Iraqi interior ministry, Col. Saad Maan, said: “Two suicide attackers wearing explosive vests” targeted the home of Sheikh Wessam Al-Hardan, commander of the Iraq Sahwa [Awakening] forces, in the Harithiyyah area [west of Baghdad]. The attack “killed five of his guards and injured four others.” Maan added that “Hardan was not at home at the time of the attack.”

Security sources said attackers were supported by a number of armed men who fired RPG rockets at the house before escaping. A source at Yarmouk Hospital said they had received five bodies and were treating 13 people injured in the attack. Hardan is a tribal leader from the Anbar Province who has assumed command of local Sahwa militia forces supported by the Iraqi government.

In another two attacks in Baghdad, armed men killed civilians in the Amel and Zaafaraniyah districts using guns with silencers, according to security and medical sources.

In Mosul, a doctor from the Shabak sect was killed in an armed attack, while another was killed by an explosion that targeted an army patrol.

And in Falluajah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, a policeman was killed and 10 others injured in an attack on the Ameriyah police station south of the city, according to Capt. Firas Najib.

Meanwhile, a judge at the Tikrit Criminal Court, Amer Rashid Azzawi, was injured when an device exploded near his convoy in the center of the city. According to the police, the explosion injured five of his guards.

Also, the chairman of the Salaheddin Appeals Court uncovered a terror plot against judicial staff in the Salaheddin province that targeted judges specifically, according to a statement from the judicial authority. Two judges have been killed in the province in the last few months. They were deputy appeals judge Sajer Abed Abbas, and court official Jazzaa Dhiyab Jazzaa.

Meanwhile, unknown insurgents kidnapped engineer Suwaydan Al-Asmi, director of gas energy at the Bayji Power Plant, while he was leaving a mosque on Sunday.