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Truck Bomb Kills at Least 19 in Northern Iraq
[Asharq al-Aswat] A suicide truck bomber hit a residential area of a Kurdish village in northern Iraq before dawn Thursday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 30 others, officials said, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of ethnic attacks in the region. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents who remain active in Mosul and surrounding areas.

A police officer and health official in Mosul said the bomb went off around 12:30 a.m. in the village of Wardek, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of the city -- a region where U.S. commanders have warned that insurgents appear to be trying to stoke an Arab-Kurdish conflict.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The blast took down a number of houses and the casualty toll was expected to rise because many people are still missing in the rubble, the officials said.

Local security forces intercepted a second suicide truck bomber, killing the driver and defusing the bomb before it could be detonated, they said.


Posted by: Fred 2009-09-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=278702