Suicide bomber in wheelchair kills two in Iraq

BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber in a wheelchair attacked a police station north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing two people and wounding 17, nine of them policemen, officials said.

"A suicide bomber detonated his explosives vest at the entrance to a police station, killing two civilians and wounding 17 people, including nine policemen in Tarmiyah," a town north of Baghdad, an interior ministry official said. A defence ministry official confirmed the report.

"The suicide bomber came up to the entrance in a wheelchair," said Colonel Tawfiq Ahmed al-Jenabi, chief of the town's police, who added he did not know if the attacker was genuinely handicapped.

Meanwhile, two people were wounded by an improvised bomb that exploded next to a convoy transporting Mohammed Ahmed al-Obaidi, mayor of the town of Al-Riyadh in the restive northern province of Kirkuk.

Obaidi, who escaped unhurt and spoke to AFP after the attack, lost a foot in a similar bombing in June last year.

Twenty-four people were killed on Thursday in three separate attacks in Baghdad, including 21 in a triple bombing at a crowded market, and an American contractor working for USAID whose convoy was hit by an improvised bomb.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011