Mosul: Barwari Escapes Assassination; US MPs wounded, Western Security Guards Killed

Public Works Minister Nasrin Barwari narrowly escaped an assassination attempt while traveling to Mosul on Sunday, , according to AP. She is the only female minister appointed by the Interim Governing Council. She is a Kurd, and a feminist, and led the movement to prevent the abolition of civil personal status law in favor of Islamic codes last winter. Heavily Arab Mosul, where there are strong radical Islamist and Baathist currents, is inhospitable territory for her.

Reuters reports litany of mayhem in Iraq on Sunday.

In Mosul, as well, guerrillas sprayed machine gun fire at two US military police, wounding them. In a separate incident, they took out a Stryker transport vehicle, but did not cause any casualties.

Guerrillas in the city hit the car of two security guards, a Briton and a Canadian, with rpg fire, killing them. They were escorting civilian engineers to a power plant. Other guerrillas had earlier conducted a drive-by shooting against two employees of the US-run Iraqi media network.

Another guerrilla grenade attack wounded an Iraq policeman in the city center. Guerrillas fired an RPG at city hall, missed, and hit a boy's school; luckily the grenade was a dud and did not go off.

Five Iraqi civilians, including three children, were wounded when guerrillas set of a bomb near Baqubah that probably targetted an Iraqi contractor working for the Americans.