BAGHDAD, 24 March 2007 — Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam Al-Zobaie, a leading Sunni Arab politician, was wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a hall where he was attending prayers yesterday.
Officials said at least six members of Zobaie’s entourage were killed in the second assassination bid on a senior member of the US-backed government in a month.
One of Zobaie’s aides named the suicide bomber as Wahab Saadi, one of the deputy prime minister’s own guards.
“He’s wounded but it’s not serious,” an official in Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s office told Reuters after Maliki visited Zobaie at the US military hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for security in Baghdad, told Iraqiya state television Zobaie was wounded in various parts of his body and underwent surgery. An aide to Zobaie said the deputy prime minister was hit by shrapnel in the abdomen and shoulder and that two of his brothers were among those wounded or killed.
The high-profile attack came the day after a rocket landed yards from the prime minister’s home during a news conference with the United Nations secretary general.
Moussawi said Zobaie was the target of two coordinated attacks — the suicide bomber at a prayer hall in the compound of his residence and a car bomb at his home. He said six of Zobaie’s security guards were killed and 15 people wounded.
Zobaie, one of two deputy prime ministers, is a member of the Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab grouping in Iraq’s Shiite-led national unity government. He is also a member of a well-known tribe from the Abu Ghraib area northwest of Baghdad.
The aide said rival factions in the tribe were feuding, one side supporting Al-Qaeda militants and the other loyal to the deputy prime minister and the government.
The western province of Anbar has recently seen a surge in violence between tribes who have come out against Al-Qaeda and militants who have been taking revenge on them for doing so.
Insurgents have frequently targeted leaders of the government. Last month Iraq’s Shiite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, was wounded by shrapnel when a bomb killed six people inside the Public Works Ministry. Yesterday’s attack took place despite a four-hour vehicle curfew that is imposed every Friday.
