Iraqi MP killed by roadside bomb

An Iraqi MP from the bloc of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.

Police said the bomb had been placed on a motorcycle and exploded as a convoy carrying Saleh al-Ogaili drove past.

He suffered severe head wounds and was later pronounced dead. He is the first MP to be killed in Iraq for 18 months.

Police said two other people died in the blast, which took place in the Habibiyah district, near the Sadr movement's stronghold of Sadr City.

The last MPs to be killed in Iraq were among eight people killed on 12 April 2007, when a suicide bomber attacked the cafeteria at the Iraqi parliament.

In another roadside bombing north of Baghdad on Thursday, the leader of an armed Sunni group working with US forces against al-Qaeda militants was killed along with two of his children and a nephew, police said.

Abbas Khudair led a Sahwa - or Awakening - group in the Uthaim area of Baquba, in the restive capital Diyala province.

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