Kirkuk, Iraq - A group of armed men abducted a senior judge from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, police said.

Fayadh Yassin Badrani, a senior justice at Kirkuk's top court, was surrounded by five gunmen as he left his home in the al-Khadra district of the city, Colonel Mohammed Rashid Ghazi of the Kirkuk police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Ghazi said the police and the army were combing the area looking for the judge and his abductors. It was unclear whether the the abductors had political motives or were simply seeking ransom.

Kirkuk, Iraq  - Unlike most of the rest of the country, Kirkuk, a province of some 850,000 people, will not be going to the polls on January 31.

The simple reason is that the province, riven by ethnic and political tensions, is not ready for a peaceful and democratic transfer of power.

New US Vice-President Joe Biden, on a visit to the city in January, proclaimed that solving the city's problems would be an important goal of the new US administration under Barack Obama.

Baghdad  - One policeman was killed and four others injured in two separate bomb attacks in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Sunday, according to a security source cited by the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news