Election candidate among 13 killed in Iraq attacks

MOSUL (AFP) - A pre-Christmas attack on a church killed two people in the Iraqi city of Mosul Wednesday while a Sunni Arab candidate died in a bombing in Fallujah, the first such murder ahead of March polls.
They were among 13 people killed in violence across the country, despite security forces ramping up their presence ahead of Christmas and the commemoration ceremonies of Ashura.
In Mosul, two people were killed and five others wounded Wednesday morning when “a handcart used to carry flour, left across the street from the Syrian Orthodox church of St Thomas, exploded,” witness Hamis Paulos said.
A hospital official in the main northern city said the two people killed were Muslims, based on examination of their identity papers.
The attack was the sixth on Christians in Mosul in less than a month, and came after the army said it put its forces on alert in areas with significant Christian populations because of intelligence they could be attacked.
In the former rebel bastion of Fallujah, a Sunni Arab candidate for parliamentary elections on March 7 was killed in a “sticky bomb” attack.
Saud al-Essawi of the Iraqi Unity Alliance (IUA) and his two bodyguards were killed when a magnetic bomb attached to his car exploded in the city, 50km west of Baghdad.
The IUA is a multi-confessional grouping led by Ahmed Abu Risha, a key Sunni leader who turned against Al-Qaeda to play a major role in reversing Iraq’s insurgency, and current Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, an independent Shiite.Iraqi political leaders and senior American generals have expressed concerns in recent months about violence linked to the election. The security situation in Fallujah has improved dramatically in recent years.