Monday, October 09, 2006
Car bombs increase fivefold in Kirkuk
Security
Bombings and shootings are increasing in northern Iraq as part of a power struggle between Arabs and Kurds. Car bombings in oil-rich Kirkuk grew fivefold last month and hundreds of Kurdish families have left the north's biggest city, Mosul, to escape the violence. The bloodshed suggests growing strains in another of Iraq's sectarian divides. Baghdad has been suffering from violence between Sunni and Shiite death squads. In the north, the tensions are between Arabs and Kurds, who claim Kirkuk as part of their autonomous zone of Kurdistan to the north.
The number of car bomb attacks in the city jumped from three in August to 16 in September, according to figures from Kirkuk police. The number of deaths from violence in the city rose from 12 to 42. Numbers for the rest of Tamim province, where Kirkuk is the capital, were not available. But Associated Press figures gathered from police reports show a swell of violence. July was the peak with at least 93 dead, compared to around 20 a month in the spring. The attacks are largely blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents targeting Kurds and the Kurdish-dominated police force.
The number of car bomb attacks in the city jumped from three in August to 16 in September, according to figures from Kirkuk police. The number of deaths from violence in the city rose from 12 to 42. Numbers for the rest of Tamim province, where Kirkuk is the capital, were not available. But Associated Press figures gathered from police reports show a swell of violence. July was the peak with at least 93 dead, compared to around 20 a month in the spring. The attacks are largely blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents targeting Kurds and the Kurdish-dominated police force.
Sunni Arabs dominate Mosul — but not by much, with some 1.8 million out of the province's four million people, living alongside a population of some 1.3 million Kurds. The rest are a mixture of Turkoman, Yazidi and other ethnicities. Police could not provide official death figures from the province, but AP reports showed that deaths numbered around 80 a month from July through September, up from a few dozen a month in the spring.
