(Updates with new source, details of Baquba attack, Dakok toll) By Mariam Karouny BAGHDAD, June 8 (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked the home of a police chief north of Baghdad overnight, police sources said on Friday, killing 14 people including his wife, at least one brother and two sons. In the northern Iraqi town of Dakok, 19 people were killed in bomb attacks on two Shi'ite mosques just as Friday prayers were ending, Kirkuk police Brigadier-General Sarhat Qader said. Television footage showed wounded women and children, bloodied and crying, being carried on stretchers into a local hospital. The attacks were the latest in a spiral of sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunnis that has killed tens of thousands since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 and raised fears of civil war. South of the capital, a minibus packed with weapons and explosives blew up at a bus terminal in a market in the town of Qurna, police said. A doctor at a nearby hospital said 12 people were killed, while police put the death toll at eight. In Baquba, one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq and the capital of volatile Diyala province, conflicting reports emerged after gunmen attacked the home of police chief Colonel Ali Dilayan Ahmed. One police source said Ahmed's wife, two brothers and 11 bodyguards were killed and his two sons and two daughters were kidnapped late on Thursday night or early on Friday. Another source in the Diyala police operations centre said eight people, including Ahmed's wife and one brother, were killed and six people were abducted when gunmen stormed his home after first attacking it with rocket-propelled grenades. The Diyala source said the bodies of the six taken from Ahmed's home were found on Friday in the Kanaan neighbourhood of Baquba. Two bodies at the local morgue were identified as Ahmed's sons, the source said. A local official, who asked not to be identified, said Ahmed had been directly responsible for the killing of three al Qaeda fighters in Diyala this week. The province is a hotbed of al Qaeda fighters. Diyala has seen a spike in violence as a U.S.-led crackdown in Baghdad drives militants out of the capital into surrounding towns and cities. The U.S. military has sent an armoured force of 3,000 extra troops to combat the violence. The U.S. military says Sunni Arab and Shi'ite militants have migrated from Baghdad into Diyala and the neighbouring province of Salahaddin, where they have launched numerous attacks on civilians and U.S. and Iraqi forces. MOSQUES ATTACKED A minibus packed with explosives blew up outside a mosque affiliated to fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Dakok, a town about 40 km south of Kirkuk, Qader said. A suicide bomber on foot also attacked a second Shi'ite mosque, he said. Another 20 people were hurt in the two attacks. The sectarian violence has left the more homogenous Shi'ite south largely untouched, although there are power struggles between rival Shi'ite militias for control, particularly over Basra, the hub of the southern oil fields. North of Basra, in the town of Qurna, police said a minibus packed with Katyusha rockets, mortar bombs and fuel blew up in a bus terminal. The head of Qurna hospital, Doctor Mohammed Nawruz, said the hospital had received 12 bodies and was treating 33 injured. Major-General Ali Hamadi, the head of the provincial Basra emergency security committee, said the rockets and bombs had "cooked off" in the sweltering heat. The weapons had been destined for Baghdad, epicentre of the country's sectarian violence between minority Sunnis and majority Shi'ites, Hamadi told Reuters. He said the manager of the terminal and two others were arrested. The minibus explosion caused a car parked nearby to explode, leading to initial reports that there had been two car bombs, he added. (Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra)
