A double bombing killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police,
and wounded an additional 70 in a parking lot outside the main police
offices the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, according to
security officials.
It was the second major attack against police forces this month, after
16 people were killed in a blast outside a headquarters in the southern
city of Hilla, the first week of May.
The bombings along with recent jail break attempts in Basra and Baghdad have put Iraq’s
forces under new scrutiny as the last of the U.S. troops prepare to
leave the country at the end of the year. “This has the fingerprint of
Al Qaeda,” said Brigadier Jamal Tahi, Kirkuk’s head policeman.
Kirkuk is rife with ethnic and sectarian tensions among Arabs, Kurds and
Turkmen, all of whom view themselves as the rightful owners of the
province with its immense oil reserves. The Kurds wish to annex the
Kurkuk region to Kuridstan, while Arabs insist it belongs to Baghdad.
Despite eight years of American-backed efforts to mediate a solution,
the sides remain at loggerheads. Armed groups hope to exploit the
population’s differences with bombings and killings.
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