Baghdad, Sep 3 (DPA) A man described as second-in-command of the Al Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq has been detained, Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffaq Al-Rubaie said Sunday.
The announcement came as another series of attacks in Baquba and Baghdad left 14 killed, while a dispute between the government and Kurds in the country's north flared over flags.
Al-Rubaie announced at a news conference that Al Qaeda number two in the country - Hamad Jama Al-Saedi - was detained a few days ago in a residential building.
Al-Saedi was suspected of being behind the bombing of the Al-Askari shrine in Samarra last February, prompting a wave of sectarian violence.
In the attacks in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, a driver and four of his children were killed when their car exploded in a market in the Baquba district.
Three more people were killed when unidentified militants opened fire on them in central Baquba, while a fourth was shot in the Al-Miqdadiya district. Two policemen were shot dead when militants opened fire on a police patrol in New Baquba.
Another government official was assassinated on his way to work in Yarmouk district in western Baquba, while in Zaghnia, northeast of Baquba, a Shia mosque was blown up overnight.
In Baghdad, two US soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb struck the vehicle as they drove in the eastern part of the capital, while a bomb targeting a police patrol injured two policemen and a civilian in the eastern Baladiyat district.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki issued a statement, declaring that the present Iraqi flag should be the only flag raised in the entire country.
This comes in reaction to the Kurdish authorities' decision to ban the Iraqi flag from being hoisted on government buildings in Kurdistan.
In a statement aired by the Al-Iraqiya television, Al-Maliki defended the national flag, saying it would not be changed until the parliament takes a decision about it.
Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud al-Barazani reacted in turn by threatening to declare the region's independence.
In a speech before the Kurdish parliament in Erbil, Barazani said: "The will of the Kurdish people was derived from the parliament, and any time the parliament saw it proper to declare independence, we will declare it and we will have no fear."
Barazani defended in his speech his decision to ban the Iraqi flag from governmental buildings in Kurdistan.
Kurds associate the Iraqi national flag with Saddam Hussein's hated Baath party, which is accused of committing grave crimes against the Kurdish minority in 1988.