Police chief in Iraqi city escapes assassination bid

BASRA, Iraq, May 18 (Reuters) The police chief of Iraq's second city survived unharmed an assassination attempt when a bomb exploded outside his home today, police in Basra said.

The roadside bomb went off as Major-General Hassan Suwadi, who is in a dispute with the governor of Basra province, approached his home in his car.

''It (the bomb) targeted him,'' a senior police official said, declining to give his name.

While relatively free of the kind of Sunni Islamist bombings of civilian targets seen in US-controlled areas further north, oil-rich Basra suffers from violence among rival Shi'ite groups.

Tension rose this week after the governor asked the local council to sack Suwadi and also became involved in a public row with local aides to Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

British Defence Secretary Des Browne was in Basra today to meet British troops in the area, part of a two-day tour of frontline units that aides say the new minister hopes will give him an understanding of the situation.

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