Truck Bomber Kills 5 US Troops in Mosul;

McClatchy reports that a suicide truck bomber hit a police barricade in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, detonating 200 pounds of explosives just as a US convoy was going by. The explosion killed two Iraqi policemen and 5 US troops, and wounded two other US soldiers. Mosul is the scene of an intense Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and against the Kurdish politicians and paramilitary that dominated the largely Sunni Arab city of 1.7 million from the fall of Saddam until recently.

Sawt al-Iraq carries a report from AFP in Arabic saying that Abdul Mahdi Karbala'i, the spokesman in that city for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, warned Friday that violence might be returning to Iraq.

The Sadr Movement complains that its members are being arbitrarily arrested. A Sadr spokesman estimated that there are about 12,000 members in Iraqi and US jails, and that 300 Sadrists were arrested in the past month.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki while in Moscow this week agreed to a Russian request that Saddam-era deals between Russian petroleum concerns and local Iraqis is bieng revived.



Russia Today wonders if the Pentagon is pleased with the return of Russia to the Iraqi fields:

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Friday:

' Baghdad

A Katyusha missile hit a house in Taji district, a northern suburb of Baghdad injuring two women and causing extensive material damage to the house.

A roadside bomb targeted civilians in the city of Yousifiyah, 25 km to the south of Baghdad City killing two, injuring four others.

Nineveh

Five American soldiers were killed, and one wounded from a suicide truck bomb attack at 10 a.m. Friday in Mosul. Two Iraqi National Police were also killed and 62 people injured, 20 of whom were Iraqi security personnel, Iraqi police said. The suicide truck bomb exploded near the Iraqi National Police headquarters in al Mansour neighbourhood in the southwest section of the city. The U.S. military confirmed the incident.

- Gunmen killed Dhafir Hashim Al Jumayl, a cousin of the parliament member Usama Al-Nijaifi and his brother Atheel Al-Nijaifi who headed Al-Hadbaa list which won 48% votes of the last provincial elections, in Zihour neighborhood in Mosul around noon.

- A roadside bomb detonated in Zahraa neighborhood in eastern Mosul on Friday afternoon. A mother was killed while her daughter was wounded.

Diyala

A roadside bomb targeted civilians on the main route from the village of Mansouriyat al Jabal to Muqdadiyah, 36 km to the east of Baquba killing the mother and father, injuring their three children. '

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