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Kirkuk blasts hit Kurdish market kill at
least 85 in Kirkuk city
16.7.2007 |
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Three Bombs kill at
least 85 and another 180 injured
July
16, 2007
Kirkuk, Kurdistan region border with (Iraq),
-- Twin suicide car bombings exploded within 20
minutes of each other in the northern city of Kirkuk
on Monday, killing at least 85 people and wounding
around 180 in attacks targeting a Kurdish political
office and ripping through an outdoor market, police
said.
The attacks began around noon when a suicide bomber
detonated his explosives-packed vehicle near the
concrete blast walls of the headquarters of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani.
Soon after, the second bomber attacked the Haseer
market, 700 yards away, destroying stalls and cars,
said Kirkuk police Brig. Sarhat Qadir.
The outdoor Haseer market — with stalls of vegetable
and fruit sellers — is frequented by Kurds in Kirkuk,
a city where tensions are high between the Kurdish
and Arab populations. At least 71 people were killed
and around 150 wounded, said police Brig. Burhan
Tayeb Taha.
The car bomb exploded in a commercial area called
Iskan, near shops and a bus garage, police said. The
two blasts came within minutes of each other, police
said.
Several hours later, a car bomb exploded in the
Domiz region of southern Kirkuk, killing a police
officer and wounding six other policemen, Tahir
said.
Oil-rich Kirkuk, lies just south border of the
Kurdistan autonomous region, 180 miles north of
Baghdad, is a center of tensions between Arabs and
Kurds, who want to include the area in the
autonomous Kurdistan region of the north. Violence
in the city, though frequent, tends to be on a
smaller scale of shootings, roadside bombs and
kidnap-slayings. Monday's blast came just over a
week after one of the Iraq conflict's deadliest
suicide attacks hit a village about 50 miles south
of Kirkuk, killing more than 160 people.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the
central Kirkuk attacks, adding the explosions
indicate the failure of armed groups.
"What happened today is another indication of the
failure and bankruptcy of armed groups," al-Maliki
said.
AP | Reuters
**
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, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
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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