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Double car bombing kills 7 in Iraqi
Kurdish city of Kirkuk 17.2.2007 |
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KIRKUK, Iraq-Kurdistan border, February 17,
-- A double car bombing killed at least six people
and wounded 48 in a crowded market in the
northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, police
sources said.
The two blasts occurred in quick succession in a
garage in the mainly Kurdish Rahimawa district,
which had been one of the more secure regions of the
city, said police Captain Imad Jassim., a
predominantly Kurdish area of the ethnically mixed
city.
Several cars and shops were burned out.
Kirkuk is claimed by Iraqi Kurds but is also home to
many Sunni Arabs moved there by former dictator
Saddam Hussein in an attempt to dilute Kurdish
influence
Police said the death toll could rise.
Iraqi officials fear violence may increase outside
the capital Baghdad as U.S. and Iraqi forces step up
a crackdown on
insurgents and militias in the city of six million.
Some officials say militants are avoiding
confrontation in Baghdad or may have left the city.
Reuters | Agencies
** The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
more than 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 a Kurdistani city and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region and it is not under the full
control of Kurdistan Regional Government
administration.
Based on Iraq's Constitution, a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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