IRAQ: Iraqi protesters wounded by suicide bomber during a demonstration against Gaza attacks

Record ID: 356946

  • Title: IRAQ: Iraqi protesters wounded by suicide bomber during a demonstration against Gaza attacks
  • Date: 29th December 2008
  • Summary: US SOLDIERS AT BLAST SCENE
  • Embargoed: 13th January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA9DDL83GXR3OP5Y3ZMBK3E3CJT
  • Story Text: Protesters burned Israeli flags and fired AK-47s into the air in protest in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonates explosives the crowd.

    Protesters burned Israeli flags and fired AK-47s into the air in protest in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday (December 28), demanding a stronger response from
    Arab nations to Israeli airstrikes that killed more than 270 people in Gaza.
    A teenage boy was killed in a protest in Mosul when a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated explosives in a crowd of around 300 protesters.
    Seventeen people were wounded in the attack in Mosul, seen as a last stronghold for Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other militants even as violence subsides across Iraq, police said.
    The demonstration is one of many demonstrations that took place across Iraq, denouncing the Israeli attack that killed more than 270 people in Gaza.
    The protests came as Israel launched more air strikes on Gaza on Sunday, promising to continue pressure on Hamas following the attacks that Israel initiated in response to rocket and mortar fire from Gaza militants.
    The attacks, some of the worst in 60 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, incensed many in Iraq.
    Iraq hosted some 30,000 Palestinian refugees before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many of them found themselves victim of attack or threat once the war began, partly because they were seen as clients of the deposed leader Saddam.
    Many have fled, and several thousand Palestinian refugees have been stranded at camps, waiting to find a new home abroad, near the Iraq-Syria border for more than two years.
    The demonstrations in support of Palestinians, many of whom are Sunni Muslims, in Mosul and Falluja were organized by the Iraq's Sunni Arab Islamic Party.
    The Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki condemned the attacks on Saturday evening.
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