Bombings targeting Kurds kill at least 17 in Iraq

SULAIMANIYAH - Agence France-Presse

A man inspects the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad, June 8. REUTERS Photo

A car bomb followed by a suicide bombing hit offices of a Kurdish political party and security forces in Iraq on June 8, killing 17 people, police and doctors said.

The blasts in the town of Jalawla, north of Baghdad, also wounded 50 people, the sources said.

A senior police official said the car bomb went off close to an office of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and a Kurdish asayesh security forces building. As emergency workers came to the scene, the suicide bomber entered the PUK office and detonated explosives, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, though suicide bombings are a tactic mainly employed by Sunni Muslim militants in Iraq.

The fresh attacks come a day after a series of bombings mainly targeting Shiite-majority areas of Baghdad killed at least 24 people.

The six car bombings and one roadside bomb hit seven different areas of the Iraqi capital, also wounding more than 80 people.

Alos on June 7, clashes between security forces and militants in the northern city of Mosul killed 59 people. In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, militants took hundreds of students and staff hostage at a university, sparking an assault led by special forces to free them.

Violence is running at its highest levels since 2006-2007, when tens of thousands were killed in sectarian conflict between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority.

More than 900 people were killed last month, according to figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government. So far this year, more than 4,300 people have been killed, according to AFP figures.