Suicide bomber kills 15 at Sunni mosque

October 17, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber who hid among the Sunni congregation in a northern Iraqi mosque sprayed gunfire at Muslim worshippers Friday and then blew himself up, killing at least 15 people, including the imam leading prayers, officials said.

The brazen attack is the latest against Sunni clerics who have increasingly spoken out against al-Qaida in Iraq since U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities at the end of June. The clerics and others fear militants could take advantage of the transition to step up the kind of sectarian attacks that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war two years ago.

The man who opened fire in the mosque in Tal Afar first shot the imam, Abdul-Satar Hassan, before turning his AK-47 assault rifle on worshippers, witnesses said. He detonated his explosives only after running out of ammunition.

Ninety-five people were wounded in the attack, said Ismail Majeed, a doctor at Tal Afar hospital. Hassan, a member of Iraq’s largest Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, was among the 15 people killed, he said.

Sahir Jalal, 37, who was sitting on his prayer rug listening to the sermon, said Hassan had just begun speaking when a tall man in the crowd stood up.

“Then he took out a small rifle from under his jacket and started to shoot,” he said.

Seconds later, the man shouted “God is Great” and detonated explosives strapped to his body, he said.

The attack follows a string of others against Sunni clerics in the country.

Earlier this week, the cleric who leads the biggest Sunni mosque in Baghdad was wounded by a bomb attached to his car. Similar attacks killed a Sunni cleric last week in Saqlawiyah, 45 miles northwest of Baghdad, and last month in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Though 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 site of frequent attacks.

Tal Afar, which is primarily populated by the ethnic Turkomen minority, is only about 40 miles northwest of Mosul and has gone through cycles of stability and instability for years.