UN-envoy Ad Melkert unhurt after attack on his convoy in Iraq

Ad Melkert, the special envoy to Iraq and former Dutch politician, escaped unhurt on Tuesday in an attack on a United Nations-Iraqi police convoy in which he was riding. The convoy was hit by a roadside bomb when it was leaving Najaf, 160 km south of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding three others.

Elsewhere in Iraq, 11 people were killed after blasts ripped through the home of a senior Iraqi police commander in the northern city of Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. The attackers planted bombs and left a booby-trapped motorbike near the house of Lieutenant-Colonel Qais Farhan, commander of the emergency response unit of Tikrit. Four people were also wounded in the explosion, including Farhan. The dead included three children and four women, all of them relatives of the police commander.

Meanwhile, in Samarra, 95km north of the capital, Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding two others, while in Baghdad two bombs planted in buses wounded 15 Iranian pilgrims, officials said.