KIRKUK: Insurgents detonated a car bomb on Sunday in a protected enclave housing the US and British consulates in Iraq’s oil city of Kirkuk in the latest in a string of deadly blasts, security sources said. City leaders described the two-month-old bombing campaign as the work of Islamist extremists bent on terrorising the population and fomenting civil strife in the ethnically and religiously mixed city. The blast, which killed two and wounded six, came overnight beside a row of shops in the previously untouched Arafa Naftiya area, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood containing the headquarters of the Northern Oil Company and foreign consulates. “The terrorists are no longer targeting police, army, US forces, or political leaders, but are now going after gatherings of civilians to spread fear and hatred in the souls of the innocent,” Rizgar Ali, chairman of the provincial council, told AFP. “We are studying measures to control the deteriorating security situation with local elected leaders,” said Ali.
Kirkuk police chief Major General Shirku Shakr Hakim told AFP the Sunni extremist Ansar al-Sunna and Al Qaeda in Iraq organisations were believed to be mainly responsible for the attacks. “Kirkuk is being targeted because of its oil and its mix of ethnicities and religions that have been living in peace for dozens of years,” he said. In other violence around the country, a police patrol in Hilla, 120 kilometres south of Baghdad, was targeted by a roadside bomb that killed two civilians and wounded 10 others.