Dozens die in Kirkuk blast
- 11 years ago
ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
A bomb attack on a tea house in the ethnically mixed Iraqi city of Kirkuk killed at least 31 people on Friday (July 12), police and medics said.
The blast tore through the tea shop where people had gathered after breaking their fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in a southern district of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.
The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks since the start of the year that has prompted warnings of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds and Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.
Kirkuk is rich in oil and lies on the front line of a dispute between the Shi'ite-led central government in Baghdad and ethnic Kurds who want the city to be incorporated into their autonomous region in the north of the country.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
A bomb attack on a tea house in the ethnically mixed Iraqi city of Kirkuk killed at least 31 people on Friday (July 12), police and medics said.
The blast tore through the tea shop where people had gathered after breaking their fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in a southern district of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.
The violence is part of a sustained campaign of militant attacks since the start of the year that has prompted warnings of wider conflict in a country where ethnic Kurds and Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have yet to find a stable power-sharing compromise.
Kirkuk is rich in oil and lies on the front line of a dispute between the Shi'ite-led central government in Baghdad and ethnic Kurds who want the city to be incorporated into their autonomous region in the north of the country.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.