Baghdad - Gunmen burst into the home of a top local government official in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday and shot him dead, police told the German Press Agency dpa. Zhannun Ballu, a former officer in the Iraqi army, was the director of Mosul's Office for Tribal Affairs.
He had been appointed to his position managing relations between the government and the region's leading clans in April, following the victory of the Arab-nationalist Hadbaa List in January's provincial elections.
Later in the day, Abdel-Rahman Anad, the traditional leader of the nearby district of Tal Abta, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb exploded as his motorcade passed through the district of Yarmuk. The official escaped unharmed, police told dpa.
Mosul and its environs are among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas in Iraq. Though the region is predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslim, neighbourhoods of Mosul and villages to the east of the city are home to large Kurdish, Christian, Shabak and Yazidi minorities.
While violence has subsided in much of the rest of the country, the area remains the site of near-daily, deadly attacks. Political tensions have been particularly high since the Hadbaa List came to power in January on a platform of taking control of the province from Kurdish parties with ties to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region to the east.
Some 400 kilometres to the south, in the western Iraqi city of Falluja, at least four people were injured when a man detonated explosives packed in his car, police there said.
The blast, which targeted a police patrol in the eastern Falluja neighbourhood of al-Karama, injured three policemen and a civilian bystander, police told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency, adding that the number of confirmed casualties was likely to rise.
The bomber was thought to have been killed in the explosion.
Falluja, which lies in Iraq's Sunni heartland 45 kilometres west of Baghdad, was formerly the site of some of the worst fighting between insurgents and Iraqi and US forces.
The city and surrounding areas had been relatively quiet since US and Iraqi forces enticed many insurgents and former Iraqi soldiers to join government-allied Sahwa, or "Awakening," militias with promises of money, guns, training and jobs in the Interior Ministry.
But the area has been the site of deadly attacks targeting police and those who work with the government in recent weeks and months.
Last week bombings destroyed two bridges near the city, including an important bridge on the highway linking Iraq with Jordan and Syria.
Those attacks came amid tightened security after a coordinated series of bomb blasts left 22 people dead and 45 wounded outside a meeting on national reconciliation in the nearby city of al-Ramadi.
