IRAQ: Residents of Kirkuk assess the damage after two separate attacks targeting civilians

Record ID: 863915

  • Title: IRAQ: Residents of Kirkuk assess the damage after two separate attacks targeting civilians
  • Date: 1st January 2013
  • Summary: PEOPLE AT BLAST SCENE NEAR DAMAGED WALL MORE OF PEOPLE AT SCENE DAMAGED HOUSE PEOPLE GATHERING NEAR DAMAGED CAR
  • Embargoed: 16th January 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • City:
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVAEAB4YX3IF02M2NF0HNFF4KY5A
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: At least seven people were killed , including three attackers, and 13 others wounded in two separate attacks targeting civilians in Kirkuk late on Monday (December 31), police said.
    They said a car bomb went off in al-Wahda neighbourhood in central Kirkuk , killing four civilians and wounding 7 others.
    Three militants and one Kurdish guard were killed where militants driving a car packed with explosives tried to break into a Kurdish security office.
    At least 23 people were killed and 87 wounded in attacks across Iraq on Monday, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilise the country a year after U.S. troops left.
    Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.
    A separate bomb attack planted outside Shiite houses wounded five people.
    The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.
    No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite communities.
    Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.
    In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.
    In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.
    Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.
    Violence also hit Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.
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