Deputy Prime Minister al-Zobaie wounded in suicide bombing at home

Salam al-Zobaie

BAGHDAD, March 23 (Reuters) - Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, a leading Sunni Arab politician, was wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a hall where he was attending prayers on Friday.

Officials said at least six members of Zobaie's entourage were killed in the second assassination bid on a senior member of the U.S.-backed government in a month.

One of Zobaie's aides named the suicide bomber as Wahab Saadi, one of the deputy prime minister's own guards.

"He's wounded but it's not serious," an official in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office told Reuters after Maliki visited Zobaie at the U.S. military hospital in Baghdad's international Green Zone.

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