WORLD> Middle East
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WORLD> Middle East
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Suicide bomber kills 6 at outdoor market in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-07 11:35 Elsewhere in the north, Kurdish security forces raided a house in Irbil province, killed a suspected member of an al-Qaida front group and captured a 17-year-old girl wearing an explosives vest, provincial police said. Irbil is one of the three provinces in the Kurdish self-ruled region, the most peaceful area of the country, although some bombings have occurred there during the war. The Kurds said the 17-year-old was from a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the south. The number of female bombers has more than tripled in Iraq, from eight in 2007 to 29 this year, according to US military officials. No group claimed responsibility for the Tal Afar blast, but suicide attacks are commonly associated with al-Qaida in Iraq, which is under siege in Mosul, 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the east. Tal Afar, an agricultural city of about 220,000 people, sits along the main route linking Mosul with the Syrian border, 40 miles (60 kilometers) to the west. Al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups have used those routes to smuggle weapons and fighters from Syria to Mosul and other northern cities, US officials have said. The attack against Chalabi took place in the west Baghdad district of Mansour, where Sunni insurgents are believed to maintain a presence despite a sharp increase in security throughout the city. Chalabi, a secular Shiite who was once considered by Washington as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein, was on his way to his headquarters when the bomb exploded, his office said in a statement. Chalabi fell out of favor after his claims that Saddam maintained weapons of mass destruction proved inaccurate. He has spearheaded efforts by the Shiite-led government to purge members of Saddam's Baath party from government posts, a campaign that earned him the enmity of Sunni hard-liners. |
