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At least 11 killed in suicide attacks on
Iraqi Kurds 28.8.2006
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KIRKUK,
Kurdistan-Iraq, August 27, -- Three suicide car bomb
attacks on Kurdish targets killed 11 and wounded 66
more in the ethnically mixed northern Iraqi city of
Kirkuk on Sunday, a senior police officer said.
One attack hit a religious shrine owned by the
family of Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani,
and another the home of a Kurdish police chief,
police Brigadier General Burhan Tayib told AFP in
the city.
Earlier, a third suicide car bomber blew himself up
near the office of Talabani's Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) in Kirkuk, killing one guard and
wounding 16 party members, police said.
A total of 10 people were killed in the later
attacks, including police Colonel Ahmed Abdallah's
son, Tayib said. Three houses and the studio of a
local television station were also damaged in the
blast.
Both the later attacks took place in the Iskan
district, a stronghold of Talabani's tribe and of
his party, in Kirkuk, an oil-rich city which is
claimed by both Arabs and Iraq's Kurdish minority.
A spokesman for the PUK in the city, Jalal Joher,
blamed the blasts on Sunni Arab insurgents loyal to
the ousted regime of former leader Saddam Hussein or
the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunna.
During the Saddam era Kurds were pushed out of
Kirkuk and surrounding areas as the Sunni Arab
strongman sought to "Arabise" the oil-rich region.
Since his overthrow in 2003 parties like the PUK
have grown in strength.
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Kirkuk city is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration. 2007
referendum will decide whether the oil-rich Kurdish
province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
AFP
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