KIRKUK, Southern Kurdistan, AFP- January 13, -- Iraq's northern oil hub of
Kirkuk has been rocked by attacks as insurgents shot dead two contractors and
blew up a Shiite mosque under construction.
Gunmen planted explosives in the mosque in the Nida neighbourhood of eastern
Kirkuk and flattened the building site, Captain Imad Jassim said Saturday.
Seventy-five percent of the mosque had been built before it was pancaked in the
explosion.
In central Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead two contractors tasked with building access
lanes and wounded another two workers.
The assailants opened fire on the men while they were working next to the main
highway that runs through Kirkuk from Baghdad before fleeing, Jassim said.
Another three people were wounded and a house partly damaged when mortar rounds
slammed into Kirkuk's Nasir neighbourhood, Colonel Anwar Qadir said.
Further south, in the flashpoint city of Samarra, a Sunni prayer leader and
member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Yunis Wuhaib, was assassinated outside his
home in the southern Sikak neighbourhood, police Captain Hashim Ahmed said.
