Kurdish Official Escapes Assassination Bid

KIRKUK, Iraq, Sept 8 (AFP) - A senior intelligence official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) escaped an assassination attempt overnight in the northern ethnically-divided city of Kirkuk, police said Wednesday.
Horman Ali Othman was attacked as he was driving to his office, Kirkuk police chief Turhan Yusef told AFP.
The drive-by shooting left a bodyguard wounded while the attacker was seriously injured in an ensuing firefight, he said.
The attacker was thought to be belong to the Ansar al-Islam (Upholders of Islam) organisation, a group of Kurdish fundamentalists the US administration has accused of links with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
In the city of Mosul, further north, a member of the provincial council, Hisham Hamdani, was injured in an assassination bid and two of his bodyguards were killed, local officials said.
Two of Hamdani's brothers, as well as one of his nephews, have been gunned down in Mosul in recent weeks.