MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) — A suicide bomber dressed as a policeman killed a top Iraqi police chief in the volatile northern city of Mosul Thursday as he toured the scene of a bomb blast in which 34 people died, police said.
Brigadier General Salah al-Juburi, chief of police of Nineveh province, was killed along with two other officers as they inspected the mangled wreckage from Wednesday's bombing, which obliterated a three-storey apartment block and damaged about 100 adjoining houses, officials said.
In other violence on Thursday, a leading Shiite cleric survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Iraq's shrine city of Karbala, 100 kilometres (70 miles) south of Baghdad, that killed two of his bodyguards, officials said.
Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai was slightly wounded in the blast and was treated in hospital and then discharged, security and medical officials said. Another four bodyguards were also wounded.
Karbalai is the Karbala representative of Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and often leads Friday prayers in the Imam Hussein mosque, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki issued an angry statement saying that those behind the Mosul attacks would be hunted down and brought to justice.
"This crime exposes the moral bankruptcy of the terrorists after a string of defeats at the hands of our armed forces," he said.
The attacks have been blamed on Al-Qaeda, which US commanders say has deep roots in the ethnically diverse city 370 kilometres (225 miles) north of Baghdad.
"We have 34 people killed and 217 wounded in Wednesday's bombing," said Hisham al-Hamdani, head of the provincial council of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital.
"Whole families have vanished. There are still people trapped under the rubble. The casualty toll may increase," he told AFP.
The US military said three Iraqi soldiers were among the dead.
Wednesday's blast, the largest heard in the restive city for several years, occurred "as Iraqi army units were conducting a raid of a weapons cache in western Mosul," said Major General Mark Hertling, commanding general of US forces in northern Iraq.
"This is a stark example of Al-Qaeda's disregard for the citizens of Iraq. It also highlights their willingness to risk the lives of innocent civilians by storing weapons in civilian homes," Hertling said in a statement.
The full extent of the damage caused by the powerful blast became evident on Thursday. Only a water-filled crater about 25 metres (yards) in diameter could be seen where the apartment block had stood, while surrounding houses were a mangle of buckled concrete and twisted steel pipes, a scene reminiscent of an earthquake.
An Iraqi security official said the building was being readied by the Iraqi army for use as a snipers' position to stop Al-Qaeda fighters using a nearby bridge to hang victims of their kidnappings -- one of their favoured execution spots.
The US military blamed Al-Qaeda for Thursday's "cowardly" attack on the police chief, which it said had been carried out by a bomber disguised as a policeman.
"A suicide bomber detonated a vest bomb at the site of yesterday's bombing in Mosul," a military statement said.
"The Iraqi army and coalition forces have determined that the suicide bomber was an imposter wearing an Iraqi police uniform," it said.
The attack prompted the authorities in Mosul to impose an immediate and indefinite ban on vehicle traffic.
US intelligence experts warn that Mosul remains a dangerous "strategic centre of gravity for Al-Qaeda" due to its road links to the Syrian border, which most foreign fighters coming into Iraq use as their springboard.
The jihadists, they say, can easily blend in with the local population.
Three weeks ago, US and Iraqi forces launched a fresh assault against Al-Qaeda operatives, blamed for much of the violence in Iraq.
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