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Kurdish official, 4 escorts wounded in Kirkuk blast
21.4.2008
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April
21, 2008
Kirkuk, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
-- A Kurdish official and four of his escorts were
wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED)
went off near their vehicle in central Kirkuk on
Monday, an official police source said.
"An IED targeted the vehicle of Jabbar Hadj Jalal,www.ekurd.net
the official in charge
of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) relations department, when he was
heading to his work in Sahat al-Tayaran area in
central Kirkuk, wounding him and four of his
escorts," the source, who refused to be named, told
VOI.
"The blast also caused severe damage to the
vehicle," the source said, adding the wounded were
rushed to the Kirkuk hospital for treatment.
The PUK is one of the main components in the
Kurdistan Coalition (KC), the second largest bloc in
the Iraqi parliament with 55 out of a total 275
seats.
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city
and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan
autonomous region, the population is a mix of
majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and
Turkmen. lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. Kurds
have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk,
which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem.".
The article 140 in Iraqi constitution calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
These stages were supposed to end on December 31,
2007, a deadline that was later extended to six
months.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had 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.
Kurds seek to include the city in the autonomous
Iraq's Kurdistan region, while Sunni Muslims,
Turkmen and Shiites oppose the incorporation. The
article currently stipulates that all Arabs in
Kirkuk be returned to their original locations in
southern and central Iraqi areas, and formerly
displaced residents returned to Kirkuk.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, VOI,
Agencies
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