Suicide bombings kill 16
2005-06-02 13:29
Baghdad - Three suicide car bombings killed 16 people in northern Iraq on Thursday, including a top municipal council leader and a bodyguard of Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister, said police.
Continuing violence during the past days had also claimed the lives of three children, a United States soldier and a Sunni Muslim cleric, underscoring the rampant, random nature of an insurgency that had killed more than 780 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq's new Shiite-led government.
Police lietenant Sabah Hidayat said at least 10 people were killed and 40 wounded in a massive explosion targeted a restaurant at 08:00 in Tuz Khormato, 88km south of the northern oil city, Kirkuk.
Brigadier Sarhad Qadre said the bombing targeted the town's Baghdad restaurant, where bodyguards of Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister, Rowsch Nouri Shaways, were eating.
'Blood, pieces of flesh found everywhere'
Restaurant owner, Ahmed al-Dawoudi, said: "I was sitting inside my restaurant when about six cars parked nearby and their passengers came inside and ordered food.
"Seconds later, I heard a big explosion and the restaurant was turned into twisted wreckage and rubble. Blood and pieces of flesh were everywhere."
Shaways was not at the restaurant at the time of the blast, which killed 10 diners, including one his guards.
At least 40 were wounded, including six Shaways guards. Kurds, who wanted oil-rich Kirkuk to be part of their autonomous Kurdistan region, had been regularly targeted by insurgent attacks.
The blast set ablaze eight cars in the restaurant's car park, the focal point of a bloody, rubble-strewn scene that US and Iraqi police quickly cordoned off.
Shards of glass, shoes and splattered breakfast meals covered the restaurant's floor as emergency workers raced around overturned tables and wooden chairs in a bid to treat the casualties.
Attackers 'follow guards from Baghdad'
Colonel Abbas Mohamed Amin, chief of Tuz Khormato police said: "The suicide bomber detonated his car outside Baghdad restaurant, where the bodyguards stopped for a while to eat breakfast, while heading to Sulaimaniyah from Baghdad."
Amin said a white car was used in the attack and believed the bomber followed the guards from Baghdad.
Brigadier Sarhad Qadre said, in Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber apparently targeted two US consulate vehicles killed two Iraqi bystanders and wounded eight others in this northern city on Thursday.
The explosion, which happened at 08:30, did not damage the American vehicles.
Colonel Mudhafar Mohammed said further south in Baqouba, about 60km northeast of Baghdad, another suicide bomber killed four people, including Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, deputy head of Iraq's northeastern Diyala provincial council.
- AP