Iraq: Suicide bombings kill at least 27 people wound 60

Attacks occur as US ambassador in Iraq Ryan Crocker gives news conference in the Green Zone.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
iraq mourns 88 (photo credit: )
iraq mourns 88
(photo credit: )
Three suicide bombers launched attacks in different parts of Iraq on Monday, killing at least 27 people and wounding nearly 60 on Monday, police and politicians said. A parked car bomb also exploded outside the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one civilian, and a drive-by shooting wounded two guards at Tunisia's Embassy in the capital, police said. Monday's first suicide car bomb attack occurred near the northern city of Mosul at 10:10 a.m. when a suicide attacker detonated his car in front of an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, an official with the group said. At least 10 people were killed and 20 wounded in the attack in Tal Uskuf, a town 15 kilometers north of Mosul, said Abdul-Ghani Ali, a KDP official. Ghanim Hazim, 37, a shop owner in Tal Uskuf, said dozens of people rushed past his store to the site of the blast to help the wounded, who "were screaming and asking for help as they lay buried under big pieces of debris." He said residents of the predominantly Christian town were in deep shock because it was the first terrorist attack in their tight-knit community since the Iraq war started. "This attack shows that no place in Iraq is free from the terrorists and their evil deeds," Hazim said in an interview as firefighters and police began removing the dead and wounded. A suicide car bomber also struck a police station in Baqouba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, at about 11 a.m., killing at least 10 people and wounding 23, police said. In central Baghdad, a bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in an Iraqi restaurant in the mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhood of Karradah Mariam, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The attack occurred at about 11 a.m. less than 100 meters outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the US and British embassies and the Iraqi government's headquarters. At the time, Ryan Crocker, who became the new US ambassador in Iraq about a month ago, was giving a news conference in the Green Zone. The Iranian Embassy also is located in Karradah Mariam, and a parked car bomb exploded in a parking lot near it at about 12 noon, killing one civilian and wounding another, said Iraqi police. At about 11:30 a.m., drive-by shooters opened fire on guards outside the Tunisian Embassy in the mostly Sunni district of Mansour in western Baghdad, wounding two of them, police said.