IRAQ: A suicide bomber targeting Sunni Muslims kills at least four people at a protest camp north of Baghdad

Record ID: 357666

  • Title: IRAQ: A suicide bomber targeting Sunni Muslims kills at least four people at a protest camp north of Baghdad
  • Date: 5th July 2013
  • Summary: BLOODSTAINED GROUND/ MILITARY VEHICLE IN BACKGROUND
  • Embargoed: 20th July 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVADIE6HSV15V5XLFT1C939EA8NV
  • Story Text: At least four people were killed when a suicide car bomb blew up just metres away from a protest camp north of the capital Baghdad on Friday (July 5), witnesses and police said.
    The attack took place in the city of Samarra 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, as people gathered for noon prayers near tents pitched by Sunni Muslim protesters.
    For months, Sunnis have been protesting against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of marginalising their minority sect and monopolising power since US-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
    Among the dead were four children. Some 12 people were wounded in the attack.

    "They are innocent people who had gathered for prayer. It is a criminal act. Regional countries are behind this act, and these countries are well known because who will benefit from targeting people who were carrying prayer mats in their hands and who had gathered to pray?" said an eyewitness.
    Insurgents have been recruiting from Iraq's Sunni minority, which resents Shi'ite domination since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
    Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the civil war in neighbouring Syria, which is fast spreading into a region-wide proxy war, drawing in Shi'ite and Sunni fighters from Iraq and beyond to fight on opposite sides of the conflict.
    The number of people killed in militant attacks across Iraq reached 761 in June, the United Nations said on Monday (July 1), still well below the height of bloodletting in 2006-07 when monthly death tolls sometimes topped 3,000.
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