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WORLD> Center
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Suicide attacks kill 57 in Baghdad, Kirkuk
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-28 21:54
Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir, a Kirkuk police spokesman, said police found a car bomb nearby and detonated it safely.
After the explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said no one was hurt in the attack and that the party offices were placed under police protection. Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints. But security forces have deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims near Kazimiyah, where the Shiite saint Imam Moussa al-Kadhim is buried in a golden domed shrine. Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites. In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb attack on Monday killed four civilians near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.
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