An Iraqi police official was killed and at least four other people were wounded Monday when a homicide bomber in a wheelchair attacked a police facility in Samarra.
The bomber detonated explosives he’d concealed in the wheelchair in a blast that took the life of Samarra assistant police chief Major-General Abdul-Jabbar Rabee Muttar, Capt. Luay Mohammed told Reuters.
The attacker had gone into the Samarra police operations center and asked to speak in private with Muttar, whom he’d met before, according to Reuters. Mohammed didn’t know what they had talked about in the past.
"Then we saw flames and an explosion. The assistant police chief was beheaded,” Mohammed, who was slightly injured in the blast, told Reuters. “There were pieces of flesh from the suicide bomber.”
No one has yet come forward to take responsibility for the attack, though it resembled others executed by Sunni Islamist Al Qaeda — which, according to the American military, is behind most of the homicide bombings in Iraq, Reuters reported.
Samarra is about 60 miles north of Baghdad in a region where U.S. and Iraqi forces have concentrated their efforts to eradicate Al Qaeda operatives.
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