Kirkuk (Iraq), September 17
Four blasts killed 23 persons in Iraq’s ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk today, including a huge suicide truck bomb, a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged divided Iraqis to embrace reconciliation.
In the deadliest blast, a suicide attacker driving a truck rigged with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the political party of Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, killing 17 persons.
The area also houses a police crime centre and local offices of Iraq’s state television. The toll included 10 women and two children visiting relatives being held at the police centre.
The explosion caused massive damage, with firefighters battling flames at collapsed buildings. Charred and mangled corpses lay in the streets with scattered bits of flesh and twisted car parts.
Three car bombs in separate areas also rocked the oil-rich city, 250 km north of Baghdad, which is disputed by Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen. Hospital sources said the overall death toll could climb.
The Baghdad police today found 15 more victims of sectarian death squads, all of them bound, bearing signs of torture and with a single gunshot to the head, bringing to almost 200 the number of bodies recovered over the past five days.
Shifting the security emphasis to Iraq’s embattled capital, US and Iraqi security forces have launched a month-long crackdown in the city of seven million, which American commanders say is key to securing the rest of the country.
— Reuters
