The Kurds will not take this lying down. I expect them to go after the Wahhabis tooth and fang.
Suicide Attacks on Iraqi Kurds Kill, Wound Up to 200
Sun February 1, 2004 07:53 AM ET
Mosul Car Bomb Kills Nine
By Shamal Aqrawi
ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers strapped with explosives blew themselves up in nearly simultaneous attacks on offices of two Kurdish parties in Iraq Sunday, killing and wounding as many as 200 people, officials said.
"According to what I have been told the number of wounded and martyrs at the two headquarters may approach 200," an official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said.
Among the dead were the deputy governor of Arbil province and the city's police commander, witnesses said. Party sources said at least some of those killed were senior officials.
The blasts hit the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the PUK, the main factions in Iraq's Kurdish north, at about 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) as officials received visitors for a Muslim holiday.
"The bodies are in pieces, they are trying to collect them ...people are in shock," Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat with long experience with the Kurds, told Reuters by telephone from Arbil. "The significance of this is devastating to the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of the U.S.'s biggest allies in the war."
Many senior officials of the KDP, which controls a part of Iraq bordering Turkey, and the PUK, controlling the east of the region, were present when the bombers struck.
Witnesses said the attackers made their way through checkpoints outside the party offices, where dozens of people had gathered to celebrate the first day of the holiday.
Several senior PUK officials have been targeted in assassination attempts in recent years, attacks they blamed on the Muslim militant Ansar al-Islam group.
Ansar had a stronghold in PUK territory ahead of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, and U.S. officials say the organization has regrouped and was involved in several attacks in recent months.
Iraq's U.S.-led occupiers and Iraqi security forces have been on high alert for attacks during the Eid al-Adha holiday, and a string of blasts across the country killed at least 18 people Saturday.
Arbil has been the site of a string of recent attacks, including a car bombing at the Interior Ministry that killed at least four people in December.
The KDP and PUK ran an enclave of northern Iraq as an autonomous zone under U.S. protection following the 1991 Gulf War. Peshmerga |
