Iraqi security forces in Mosul of northern Nineveh province said Thursday they detained a key suspect for the bombing of Samarra's al-Askari shrine, a provincial police source said.
"The suspect, with the name of Aws Tariq al-Abbasi, is a former chief of a security force tasked with protecting al-Askari shrine in Samara," Brigadier Sa'id al-Jubouri, head of the police media office, told Xinhua.
The suspect is accused of collaborating with the gunmen who blew up the mosque in February 2006, which sparked sectarian killing and reprisal attacks between the Shiite and Sunni communities that claimed the lives of dozens of thousands of people, al-Jubouri said.
According to him, the security forces arrested the suspect in eastern part of the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, at about 6:00 p.m. local time on Wednesday.
"Intelligence reports asserted that the suspect had returned from Syria, where he fled to, and security forces arrested him in Mosul," said al-Jubouri.
Al-Askari shrine, one of the most holiest sites for Shiite Muslims, was attacked last year by gunmen believed to be affiliated to the al-Qaida in Iraq network.
The bombing destroyed the golden dome of the shrine, but no human casualty reported.
In Salahudin province, the Iraqi police said that the toll from a car bomb explosion near a fuel station in central the city of Tikrit, 170 km north of the capital, rose to two people killed and 18 others injured, including four in a serious condition.
Nineveh and Salahudin provinces are Sunni insurgents' strongholds and part of what so-called "Sunni Triangle" in north and west of Baghdad.
The two provinces have long been the hotbed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Source: Xinhua
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