A suicide bomber in a wheelchair killed a senior policeman in the city of Samarra today.

The bombing, 60 miles north of Baghdad, killed Major-General Abdul-Jabbar Rabee Muttar, the assistant police chief, after two days of savage Iraqi violence.

The attacker talked his way into the local police headquarters by requesting a meeting with the policeman. When the official went to meet him in reception the explosives hidden in his wheelchair were detonated, killing the man instantly and wounding four others.

Captain Luay Mohammed, another officer, was injured in the attack. “I was with the assistant police chief and we went downstairs to meet him (the bomber) in the reception area. He said he wanted to talk to the assistant police chief alone so we moved a few metres away,” he said.

“Then we saw flames and an explosion. The assistant police chief was beheaded. There were pieces of flesh from the suicide bomber.”

Samarra is in Salahuddin province, where US and Iraqi troops have launched a series of operations to wipe out al-Qaeda militants, who regrouped there after being pushed out of Baghdad and western Anbar province.

The domestic violence, thought to have been orchestrated by al-Qaeda, continued as Turkish forces pounded the mountainous Hakurk region of northern Iraq.

Abdullah Gul, President of Turkey, announced today that he has postponed a diplomatic trip to Africa in order to oversee the attack on the semi-autonomous Kurdistan.

Turkey launched the incursion after claiming that the Iraqi Government had failed to stop Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) rebels using the border region as a safe haven to plot and carry out attacks on Turks. Fighter jets were pounding rebel positions for the fifth consecutive day today, as ground fighting intensified between Turkish troops and PKK rebels.

South of Baghdad, sectarian attacks continued to target the tens of thousands of Shia faithful as they walked to the holy city of Karbala for the annual Arbaeen religious ceremony. Four pilgrims, three of them women, were murdered in a roadside suicide attack in the al-Zafaraniyah neighbourhood of southern Baghdad.

A further 48 Shia Muslims died yesterday as they walked towards Karbala. The bomber struck at a rest stop in the town of Iskandiriyah, injuring another 68 pilgrims in the process.

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