Suicide bomber kills 11 worshippers at Iraq mosque

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber opened fire on worshippers during Friday prayers at a mosque in northern Iraq and then blew himself up after running out of ammunition, killing 11 people, police and hospital officials said.

The attacker walked into the Sunni mosque in Tal Afar and started firing on worshippers with an AK-47 rifle as the imam was delivering his sermon, a local police official said. Forty-two people were wounded in the attack. When the shooter ran out of ammunition, he detonated his explosives belt, the official said.

An official with the Tal Afar hospital confirmed the casualty count. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

The imam, Abdul-Satar Hassan, a member of Iraq’s largest Sunni political party, was also killed in the attack, the official said. It was not immediately clear if the slain imam was the intended victim, although Sunni clerics have increasingly become targets in Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting.

Last week, a Sunni cleric driving home after delivering a sermon in Saqlawiyah, 45 miles (75 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, was killed by a bomb attached to his car. Earlier this week, the cleric who leads the biggest Sunni mosque in Baghdad was wounded in a similar bombing.

A Sunni cleric in Mosul was killed in September, also by a bomb attached to his car.

Tal Afar is about 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of Mosul. While violence in Iraq has dropped dramatically since the height of the insurgency, the area in and around Mosul is considered one of the last strongholds of the Sunni-backed insurgency and the scene of some horrific bombings recently.

Those attacks have mainly targeted ethnic minorities, possibly indicating insurgents are seeking out vulnerable, relatively unprotected targets to maximize casualties as the strapped Iraqi army focuses its efforts on more central areas of the country.

On Aug. 7, a suicide truck bomb flattened a mosque in a northern Mosul suburb, killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 200. On July 9, two suicide bombers wearing explosives belts killed at least 38 people and injured 66 near a judge’s house in Tal Afar.

The U.S. military has said overall levels of violence remain low compared with past years but have warned insurgents will step up efforts to re-ignite sectarian violence before January’s national elections.

It is also a sensitive time for the government because Iraqi forces are assuming control of security from U.S. forces.

President Barack Obama has ordered all combat troops to pull out by Aug. 31, 2010, leaving up to 50,000 in advising roles. Under the security agreement between Iraq and the U.S. all American forces are to leave by the end of 2011.