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Bodyguard of main Iraqi party killed, 5 guards of ex-speaker arrested over terrorism charges

02 May 2012 18:20 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A bodyguard working for the office of the head of the Sunni-backed Iraqia parliamentary bloc was killed Wednesday, while police announced the arrest of four bodyguards and a son-in-law of ex-parliament Sunni speaker, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Gunmen shot dead in the morning a bodyguard works for the office of Ayad Allawi, head of Iraqia bloc, in front of his house in Baghdad western central district of Harthiyah, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Ayad Allawi, Shiite secular and former prime minister, has long been in deep political dispute with his chief rival the current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, head of the religious Shiite Dawa Party.

Separately, the Iraqi security forces arrested four bodyguards of the ex-speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, in addition to his son-in- law who is also Mashhadani’s nephew, the source said.

"The security forces arrested four of the bodyguards of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani and his son-in-law Abdullah Mohammed al-Mashhadani, who works as deputy chief of the research department in the Council of Representatives (parliament)," the source added.

The arrest of the five came after the security authorities extracted confessions from a detainee saying that the five suspects might be involved in previous bomb attacks in Baghdad Shiite district of Kadhmiyah, he said.

His son-in-law and the four bodyguards, who are also cousins to Mashhadani, have been captured two days ago, he added.

In Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in a town near the provincial capital city of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, two roadside bombs detonated almost simultaneously at a marketplace in the town of Bani Saad, 20 km south of Baquba, wounding five people and damaging three nearby shops and two civilian cars, the source said.

Diyala province, which stretches from the eastern edges of Baghdad to the Iranian border east of the country, has long been a stronghold for al-Qaida militants and other insurgent groups since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.