Iraq finance minister unhurt in bombing: Spokesperson

Iraqi Finance Minister Rafie al-Esawi, a prominent Sunni Muslim politician, escaped unharmed when a roadside bomb exploded near his car and wounded two of his security guards, his office and a health official said on Monday.

Esawi is one of the leaders of the Sunni-supported, cross-sectarian Iraqiya political bloc, ensnared in a crisis triggered when Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought the arrest of a Sunni vice-president and the ouster of his own deputy, another prominent Sunni, last month.

The crisis threatens Iraq's fragile power-sharing government, a fractious alliance of Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish factions that has made little headway on legislation since it was formed a year ago.

Esawi was in a convoy of vehicles heading to Baghdad on Sunday when a bomb exploded in the town of Ishaqi, 100km (60 miles) north of the capital, said Zaid Mohammed, the finance ministry's media manager.

"It was a roadside bomb placed on the main road targeting the convoy of Doctor Rafie in al-Ishaqi town yesterday evening," Mohammed told Reuters.

Esawi had attended a funeral in Salahuddin province, he said. Two local police officers denied that there had been any such attack.

But a local health official confirmed two of Esawi's guards had been hurt in a bombing.

"We received two wounded security guards of Rafie al-Esawi. We did the medically required procedures and took shrapnel from their bodies," said Jasim al-Dulaimi, the head of the health operations centre in Salahuddin province.

The latest political crisis erupted shortly after the last US troops rolled out of Iraq on December 18. Maliki announced an arrest warrant had been issued for Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, on charges of running death squads.

He also asked parliament to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq because he compared Maliki with Saddam Hussein. A few days later a spate of bombings in mainly Shi'ite areas in Baghdad killed at least 72 people and raised fears of a return to the sectarian conflict that drove Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006-07.

Esawi was named along with Iraqiya leader Iyad Allawi as co-author of an editorial in the New York Times last week that said Iraq was headed towards a "sectarian autocracy that carries with it the threat of devastating civil war."