Kirkuk, Iraq: Car bomb kills 11 in Kurdish market

Police and residents examine remains of the car bomb that exploded in a Kirkuk market. Several homes and shops were destroyed, police said. Photo Credit: By Emad Matti -- Associated Press


Car Bomb Hits Kirkuk Market
Attack Kills at Least 11 in Kurdish Area of Northern Iraqi City

By Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 11, 2007; A14
BAGHDAD, Aug. 10 -- A car bomb tore through a produce market in the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday morning, police said, killing at least 11 people and wounding 45 others.
The attack occurred in al-Hurriya, a Kurdish neighborhood in the southern part of the oil-rich city, as women shopped at the outdoor market. Several nearby homes and shops were destroyed, Kirkuk police Col. Pestton Mahmoud said.
Kirkuk has seen rising tensions among the city's Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen ethnic groups, which all have significant populations in the area. More than 85 people were killed by a truck bomb in Kirkuk on July 17.
Northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region is seeking to bring the city under its control, a move opposed by many Arabs and neighboring Turkey, which claims to represent the interests of the Turkmen minority. An Iraqi referendum on Kirkuk's status is scheduled for later this year.
Overall, the level of violence across Iraq was low on Thursday and Friday, in large part because of a three-day vehicle curfew in Baghdad that was intended to protect Shiite pilgrims traveling to a shrine in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood. Two people were reported killed during this year's holiday, in contrast to 2005, when nearly 1,000 people were killed after a stampede broke out among worshipers because of rumors of a suicide bomber.
The U.S. military announced Thursday that two American troops had been killed this week. A Marine died in combat Tuesday in Anbar province, and a soldier died Wednesday as a result of "non-hostile" causes.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi army said that Mwafaq Yassin, a senior leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed near Mosul on Friday. The army called Yassin the "right-hand man" to al-Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the pseudonym of an insurgent who the U.S. government says is an Egyptian with deep ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
Also Friday, Col. John Castles, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, told reporters that Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had gone to Iran.
Sadr leads the powerful Mahdi Army militia and commands the loyalty of 30 members of Iraq's parliament. Amid controversy over Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs, U.S. officials said earlier this year that Sadr spent several months in Iran, which his aides denied.
Castles, in a videoconference with Pentagon reporters, said the information on Sadr's whereabouts was based on U.S. intelligence reports, the Associated Press reported.
Ahmed al-Shaibani, a spokesman for Moqtada al-Sadr, denied that the cleric had left the country. "Moqtada al-Sadr is still in Iraq and is in Najaf among his followers and the people who love him," Shaibani said. "These are rumors and lies by the occupation forces."
Najaf residents said they believed Sadr had left the country because the usual stream of visitors into his compound had stopped recently and there have been fewer guards outside than usual.
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.




Firemen hose down a burning vehicle after a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, August 10, 2007. A car bomb blew up near a market in a Kurdish district of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing at least seven people and wounding 45, local hospital doctors said. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)


Car bomb kills 8 in Kurdish market


August 11, 2007

By Sally Buzbee - BAGHDAD (AP) — A car bomb killed at least eight persons in a northern Kurdish area yesterday, but Baghdad remained largely calm with a driving ban still in effect and thousands of Shi'ite pilgrims headed home.
U.S. military officials praised the performance of Iraqi security forces during the pilgrimage Thursday, in which hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites march to a northern Baghdad shrine, undisturbed by any major violence.
The driving ban and curfew imposed on Baghdad for three days will be lifted at dawn today.
"They have done an absolutely amazing job," said Col. John Castles, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82 Airborne Division, speaking of Iraqi forces who protected the march.
"We have been in solely a support role, in the background only. And this is something that the Iraqis planned themselves, coordinated and then executed, over a span of three or four days," Col. Castles said.
Col. Castles, whose soldiers are responsible for Sadr City, the Shi'ite slum where many pilgrims began their walk, also said radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is thought to have returned to Iran.
A spokesman at Sheik al-Sadr's headquarters in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, called the U.S. assertion a "baseless rumor."
"The Americans are just trying to find out where al-Sadr is," the spokesman said.
Sheik al-Sadr, the head of a major Shi'ite militia called the Mahdi Army, had taken refuge in Iran earlier this year as the United States began sending more troops into Iraq. He appeared again on May 25 in public in Iraq, but was last heard from inside the country on June 28.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who traveled to Turkey and Iran this week, stayed an extra day in Tehran yesterday for laser surgery to correct a distance vision problem in his right eye, according to a government official traveling with the Iraqi leader. He said the procedure was successful.
Separately, two U.S. soldiers were wounded when a U.S. helicopter went down south of the capital, the military said. Their injuries were not life-threatening.
The HH-60 helicopter was en route to support a planned mission when it made the forced landing in Youssifiyah, the U.S. military said.
An Iraqi army officer said the helicopter went down after hitting an electricity pole during a raid targeting an insurgent. The U.S. military did not confirm that.
It was the second helicopter to crash in less than two weeks. On July 31, an AH-64 Apache helicopter went down after coming under fire in eastern Baghdad but the two crew members were safely evacuated.
The car bomb, hidden in a parked car, hit a market in a Kurdish area of Kirkuk, a disputed oil-rich city 180 miles north of Baghdad.
Tensions have increased in Kirkuk as Kurds seek to include the city in their autonomous zone in northern Iraq — a move opposed by Arabs and Turkmen. Kirkuk has also seen an increase in violence by militants thought to have fled the recent U.S. crackdown in Baghdad.
In all, at least 55 persons were killed or found dead nationwide.





At least 7 killed in car bombing at Kirkuk market


An Iraqi soldier secures the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad August 10, 2007. A car bomb killed 11 people and wounded 45 others near a market in a Kurdish district of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, police said.

An Iraqi soldier secures the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad August 10, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
BAGHDAD, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- At least seven people were killed and some 40 others were injured in a car bomb attack at a popular marketplace in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, a municipal police chief said.
"A car bomb ripped though the Hurriyah vegetable market in Kikruk City at about 12:15 p.m. (0815), killing at least seven people and wounding 40 others," Brigadier Burhan Wasif, police chief of Kirkuk city told Xinhua by telephone.
The blast damaged several civilian cars and nearby shops, he added.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene to ferry the wounded people to hospitals, he said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces immediately cordoned off the area to secure the scene, he added.




Residents stand near a destroyed vehicle after a suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, August 10, 2007. A car bomb blew up near a market in a Kurdish district of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing at least seven people and wounding 45, local hospital doctors said. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)


Death toll in Kirkuk market car bombing rises to eight

The toll in a car bomb attack at a popular marketplace in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk on Friday went up to eight people killed and 51 wounded, the city's police chief said.
"The final reports said that eight people were killed and 51 others were wounded in the car bombing of the crowded marketplace in Kirkuk," Brigadier Burhan Wasif told Xinhua by telephone.
Around midday a booby-trapped car ripped through a vegetable market in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Hurriyah in Kirkuk City, destroying many nearby stalls, shops and civilian cars, Wasif said.
Earlier, Wasif put the toll at seven people killed and some 40 others wounded.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene to ferry the wounded people to hospitals in the city, some 250 km north of Baghdad, said the police chief, adding U.S. and Iraqi forces immediately cordoned off the area to secure the scene.
Tensions have heightened among Kirkuk's mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen as the city's Kurds are seeking to annex the oil-rich city to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.
Source: Xinhua