Iraq VP survives bomb, cabinet backs oil law

By Ahmed Rasheed and Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite vice president and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt on Monday when a bomb killed six people at a ministry in Baghdad where they were attending a ceremony.

Near the volatile western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at a police station, killing 14 people including women and children, a local hospital official said.

While militants defied a security crackdown, the cabinet endorsed a draft oil law crucial to regulating how wealth from Iraq's vast reserves would be shared by its ethnic and sectarian groups, a move hailed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as a "pillar for the unity of Iraqis."

Settling potentially explosive disputes over the world's third largest oil reserves has been a top demand of Washington to maintain its support for Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist who leads a unity government of Shi'ites, ethnic Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

Police said Public Works Minister Riad Ghareeb, a Shi'ite, was seriously wounded when the bomb exploded in a meeting hall. Aides to Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said he escaped with light shrapnel wounds. One police source said the death toll could be as high as 12. The bomb wounded 31 people.

Maliki, under pressure to quell violence threatening to plunge the country into all-out civil war, vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attack.

Iraqi leaders are often targeted by militants on either side of the sectarian divide. The ministry attack came despite a major new U.S.-backed crackdown aimed at ridding Baghdad's lawless streets of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shi'ite militias.

One witness told Reuters the force of the blast had thrown Abdul-Mahdi against a wall at the ministry, in the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Mansour in western Baghdad.

"All his guards threw themselves on top of him," he said.

His aides said he was later discharged from hospital.

"He has light shrapnel wounds in different parts of his body but it is not serious," a political source from the ruling Shi'ite Alliance said, referring to the vice president.

Abdul-Mahdi is one of Iraq's two vice presidents. The other is Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab.

The cause of the blast was under investigation.

Ghareeb's deputy had also been taken to hospital. Several senior ministry officials were among those killed, police said.

The suicide attack involving the ambulance occurred in a village near Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, the local hospital official said. Five policemen were among the dead.