Baghdad - A tribal police leader escaped an assassination attempt on Wednesday when a car bomb went off targeting his motorcade in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a police source said.

Abdel Karim Nasief, director of Multaqa district, was west of Kirkuk when an bomb-laden car struck his motorcade, injuring him and three of his security men, a police source told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

Tribal police, also known as "Awakening Councils," are US-backed Sunni units formed to fight militants from the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq.

Tribal leaders who were tired of al-Qaeda's indiscriminate killings and austere version of Islam collaborated with the US military to fight the terrorist organization.

Baghdad  - Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi Tuesday regretted not reaching an agreement on the provincial elections law and criticized parliamentary blocs for hampering the vote on the law.

"Parliamentary blocs should show some flexibility and try to compromise to reach an agreement," al-Hashemi told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

Baghdad  - The leadership of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Saturday condemned the previous day's bombing in a marketplace in the town of Tall Afar in which at least 25 people were killed.

In an official statement the Kurdish leadership said it "vehemently denounces" the bombing, describing it as a mean "terrorist act."

The bomb blast on Friday evening was caused by a car bomb planted near a marketplace in Tall Afar, located in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh close to the Syrian border.

Baghdad- Iraqi officials and parliamentarians are to inaugurate the country's new parliament building relocated outside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone compound for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion, an Iraqi official said Saturday.

The inauguration is to take place Sunday, the independent Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported.

The move is seen as yet another sign that security in Iraq is improving steadily. A drop in violence to a four-year low, analysts believe, made the move possible.

Numerous government offices and foreign embassies are inside the sprawling Green Zone.

Baghdad - The Iraqi embassy in Cairo is to start repatriating free of charge Iraqi refugees on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's private jet, according to the Iraqi pro-government newspaper al-Sabah.

"Al-Maliki gave the green light to such flights after the Embassy reported to him that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has for months stopped financially supporting flights from Egypt to Iraq leaving dozens of Iraqi families stranded," al-Sabah quoted Iraqi councilor in Cairo Nizar Mohammed as saying.

The councilor said the first flight will include 60 families totalling 250 passengers, and that there will be a weekly flight to help airlift the growing number of people wanting to return to Iraq.

Baghdad  - The President of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan Massoud Barzani called on Kurds and Arabs on Friday "to have an open dialogue and find a consensus solution for the city, away from any foreign interventions."

During his few-hours-visit to Kirkuk on Friday, Barzani said: "We do not accept any side imposing its agenda on us, and likewise we do not want to do the same."

The Kurdish leader described Kirkuk as "Iraq's Kurdish city," and asked people to live peacefully together.