Governor of restive province in Iraq wounded by suicide bomber

The governor of Iraq’s restive Diyala province was wounded in a suicide car bombing on Saturday, while a provincial elections candidate was killed in another attack, police and a doctors said.

The suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at Governor Omar al-Humairi’s house in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, wounding him, killing two of his guards and injuring six more, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said.

Humairi, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, became governor of Diyala, a province that suffers frequent attacks by militants, in September.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sunni militants linked to the Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq often target the security forces and government officials, and suicide bombings are a hallmark of the group.

Also on Saturday, Sheikh Hassan Hadi al-Janabi, a provincial elections candidate in Babil province, was killed south of Baghdad by a magnetic “sticky bomb” along with two of his relatives, a police captain and a doctor said.

While violence in Iraq has decreased significantly since its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain common.