Suicide strike on Iraq minister's convoy kills 11

By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber rammed into a convoy carrying Iraq's labour minister in morning traffic, killing 11 people and wounding 22 in central Baghdad, police said on Thursday.

A spokesman for the Labour Ministry said Minister Mahmoud al-Sheikh Radhi was unhurt, but three of his bodyguards were among the dead.

In a sign of the sharp reduction in violence across Iraq this year, U.S. forces put Iraqis in control of Babil province -- including the fertile palm groves once rife with Sunni militants that U.S. troops used to call the "triangle of death."

But the strike on the minister's convoy was a reminder authorities have not been able to halt suicide bombings, a signature tactic of Sunni Islamist militants such as al Qaeda, despite a drop in other types of violence across the country.

A Reuters television cameraman in the vicinity filmed the blast but an Iraqi soldier confiscated his videotape.

The cameraman, about 150 metres (yards) away at the time of the explosion, saw a car slam into a convoy of six or seven four-wheel-drive vehicles and explode in a ball of flame near Tahrir square in central Baghdad.

Police and bodyguards in the convoy opened fire after the blast. Several vehicles crashed and others sped away.

Although militants are still able to carry out bomb attacks, they no longer control whole towns and rural districts as they did in the first half of 2007, when Washington sent additional troops and many Sunni Arabs joined U.S.-backed patrols.