Twin car bomb attacks on Iraqi governor kill 26

Most of the dead were policemen, a medic said, while a defence ministry official said 29 people were wounded in the powerful twin blasts.

A police colonel said Diwaniyah provincial governor Salam Hussein Alwan was the target of the attack but was late in leaving home and thus escaped unharmed, as did his family.
"The plan was for the bombs to explode as the governor left for work in his convoy of vehicles," he said.

The colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bombs exploded at 7:45 am (local time) at a police barrier about 30 metres from the governor's home, seriously damaging blast walls protecting the compound.

Defence ministry spokesman Mohammad al-Askari said "26 people were killed and 29 were wounded."

"Two suicide bombers exploded their car bombs targeting the governor's home," he told AFP. "The first bomber detonated the bomb at the entrance of the compound, and three minutes later the second bomber did the same at the same spot," he added.

Earlier, a medic at the main hospital in Diwaniyah, 160 kilometres south of Baghdad, said 21 dead bodies had been received, all of them policemen, and many of them burnt. Thirty-five wounded people had been brought to the hospital.

"All of the dead are policemen," the medic told AFP. "Among the wounded are 30 policemen and five civilians -- two children, two men and a woman -- people whose homes were nearby," he added.