US and Iraqi officials are blaming al-Qaeda linked Islamic militants and Saddam loyalists for a suicide bomb attack on the offices of a Kurdish political party that killed at least five people and injured 40, including several children, in this oil-rich northern city yesterday.
Witnesses said a white Nissan pick-up truck packed with explosives detonated at around 10.30am on a road outside the main offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two Kurdish groups controlling northern Iraq and whose leader, Jalal Talabani, is the head of the Iraqi governing council.
It was the worst attack yet in the city of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen and offers further evidence that the insurgents — whether Islamic radicals, ex-Ba’athists or both — are spreading their activities away from the ”Sunni triangle” to the relatively tranquil north, targeting US soldiers and individuals and groups that are deemed to be cooperating with the US-led administration.
The explosion destroyed a side wall of the two-storey building and shattered windows and doors. At the city’s television station next door, windows were blown out and ceilings damaged while across the road students at the Kirkuk high school were reported injured by flying glass.
The brunt of the blast was borne by a car and a taxi behind the truck when it exploded. Witnesses said one of the vehicles had been carrying a woman and two children who were both killed. The taxi driver was also reported dead.
Jalal Jawhar Aziz, the head of the PUK’s Kirkuk office, said: ”I was in a meeting with colleagues when there was a bang like nothing I’ve heard. We picked our way through the dust and broken glass to see if we could help out on the street. Nobody inside was hurt, but it was a terrible sight outside.”
One hour later, body parts in pools of blood could still be seen on the road as US army cranes began to remove the wreckage of burnt out cars.
In the Kirkuk general hospital a six-year-old girl writhed in agony as doctors tended her wounds. Since the end of major hostilities, such attacks have been rare in the north, though Kirkuk and Mosul have witnessed a surge in ambushes and assassination attempts using roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars.
PUK officials in Kirkuk said they had beefed up security following threats from Ansar al-Islam, an extreme Islamist group with links to al-Qaeda that US officials believe may have joined forces with senior members of the former regime to stage some of the recent suicide attacks in Iraq.
Aziz said: ”I believe this could be the work of a group such as Ansar al-Islam. They are the enemies of this city, this country, and the whole of civilisation. And we have a history with them.”
Until the beginning of the US-led campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, Ansar al- Islam had controlled a mountain stronghold near the Iranian border. Though dominated by Kurds, it also harboured Arab fighters, some of whom were said to be experienced al-Qaeda operatives. The group scattered over the Iranian frontier after being attacked by US forces fighting alongside PUK peshmerga in the first week of the war.
But since then Ansar militants, now regrouped into cells, have reportedly re-emerged in cities such as Mosul, a former stronghold of Saddam, and Fallujah.
Some US officials suspect Ansar al-Islam is working with Saddam loyalists areas north of Baghdad. ”Local and regional affiliates of al-Qaeda are taking matters into their own hands, linking up with whoever will fund them,” said a security adviser to the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad.
The most recent statement purporting to come from the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which threatened increased terrorist activity in Iraq, praised Ansar militants and named individual Kurds as legitimate targets. – Guardian Unlimited Â