A roadside bomb in Iraq targeting worshippers at a mosque on Friday killed 15 people and injured 61 in Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, local police and health officials said. The dead from the blast, which happened as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers in the Sunni-dominated city 150 km north of Baghdad, included a senior provincial judge and many local officials were also among the injured. “Our hospital received 15 bodies and 61 wounded,” Raed Ibrahim, head of the health department in Salahuddin province, told Reuters from Tikrit. Tikrit, a former al Qaeda stronghold, is dominated by Sunni Muslims, a minority in Iraq who were favoured under Saddam, and the town and its surrounding Salahuddin province continue to suffer frequent attacks by suspected Sunni Islamist insurgents opposed to the Shi’ite-led authorities in Baghdad. Friday’s attack, inside a complex of palaces which belonged to Saddam, followed four bombs on Thursday in Ramadi in western Iraq which killed at least six people and injured 17.
