IRAQ - Mar 23 - Iraqi Deputy PM Wounded In Suicide Bombing.

A Sunni who crossed the sectarian divide to join the Shiite-led government as a deputy PM is gravely wounded in a suicide bombing in a mosque at his home, his chest pierced with shrapnel. Nine people were reported killed in the attack. A man wearing an explosives vest blew himself up as the official, Salam al-Zubaie, one of two deputies to PM Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, was leaving a mosque built inside the courtyard of Zubaie's compound in a residential area behind the FM, according to the police and Harith al- Obeidi, a lawmaker with Zubaie's Sunni Accordance Front, the largest parliamentary bloc. Obeidi said the mosque was in a tightly secured area and cars would be searched but not people. State-run Iraqiya Television, citing a "special source", reported that the attacker was one of Zubaie's bodyguards, but that could not be confirmed. Zubaie's compound is near the Green Zone, which houses the US and British embassies and the Iraqi government headquarters. Ziad al-Ani, a top official from the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, said the attacker blew himself up inside the mosque. The room was devastated, with debris and pools of blood covering the floor and light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. The walls were pockmarked from shrapnel. The Baghdad authorities have imposed a weekly four-hour vehicle ban from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. to protect Friday prayer services from suicide car bombers. A US military spokesman, Lt Col Christopher Garver, said Zubaie was taken to a hospital run by the US in the Green Zone. Ani said Zubaie was in "serious condition" at the hospital's intensive care unit. Obeidi said a brother and cousin of Zubaie died, as did the imam of the mosque. One of the nine people killed in the attack was an adviser to Zubaie, Mufeed Abdul-Zahra. Five of Zubaie's bodyguards were among the 14 people wounded. Like most of the Sunni Arab politicians who agreed to join Maliki's Shiite-dominated government, Zubaie is routinely denounced by Sunni insurgents as a traitor. Maliki named Zubaie as his deputy for security; the other deputy PM, Barham Saleh, a Kurd, holds the economics portfolio. Zubaie repeatedly complained that he was being sidelined by the PM and his top aides. He recently told an interviewer that his authority did not exceed that of a junior government employee. The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, denounced the suicide bombing. "It demonstrates that there are some terrorists who are going to do whatever they can to disrupt things", Snow said. The US has sent about 30,000 additional troops to support the efforts to pacify the capital, as well as Anbar Province. While the fighting in Baghdad has been between Shiites and Sunnis, there has been more of an internal struggle in Anbar, the Sunni- dominated province that stretches west of the capital to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The US military said three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas struck targets in the Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad last week, killing at least 2 Iraqi police officers and sickening 356 people. The three bombings, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents, raised to seven the number of chlorine attacks since Jan. 28, causing the US military to warn that insurgents are adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic. The Islamic State of Iraq, which groups Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and several other Sunni extremist groups, denied using "poisonous gas" against civilians. Greater UN presence urged Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said that he wanted to expand the UN' presence in Iraq, Warren Hoge reported from Cairo. The UN has limited its involvement in Iraq since a bomb blew up its Baghdad headquarters in August 2003, killing 22 people. A mortar exploded harmlessly near Ban as he visited Baghdad, and he said he thought security was still insufficient to justify an imminent return.