Suicide truck bomber kills 19 in Iraq

Suicide truck bomber kills 19 in Iraq

BAGHDAD - A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil on Wednesday morning, killing at least 19 people and wounding 80, officials said.

Kurdish officials blamed al-Qaida linked insurgents for the devastating attack.

The bombing came just as Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Baghdad for an unannounced visit that was to include meetings with top Iraqi government officials, leaders of influential Iraqi factions and the senior U.S. military commander here.

Cheney's visit was aimed at encouraging rival Iraqi factions to work together to overcome their divisions to work together to end the conflict.

The explosion in Irbil, 215 miles north of Baghdad, underscored how even relatively safe areas of the country were not immune from the violence. Irbil, the capital of the Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, had been spared much of the violence wracking the rest of Iraq.

The Interior Ministry building was badly damaged. Kurdish television showed rubble laying in piles and twisted metal beams. Rescue workers reached into the wreckage to pull out one of the victims of the blast. Windows were blown out down the street and wreckage was scattered nearly 100 yards away.

The nearby security headquarters was also damaged.

Zariyan Othman, the Kurdish health minister, said 19 people were killed and 80 were wounded, including five who were in serious condition. Hamza Ahmed, a spokesman for the Irbil governor's office, said the dead and wounded included police and civilians.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni Arab insurgent group, and Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish militant group with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam has been blamed for a number of attacks, including attempts to assassinate Kurdish officials.

Othman said authorities learned that insurgents were planning a large attack a week ago when police arrested a militant cell in the town of Sulaimaniyah.

"During questioning they confessed that were getting training lessons in a neighboring country and that was Iran," he said.

The last major attack in Irbil took place Feb. 1, 2004, when twin suicide bombers killed 109 people in two Kurdish party offices. Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for that attack.

"Kurdistan is a safe region and this will have its affect on trade, and companies will fear coming to this region," Othman said.

In other violence, police found four decapitated heads in the Sabtiyah area north of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, health officials said. The body of a security officer was also found shot in the head and chest in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, police said.

The attacks came a day after a suicide car bomber struck a crowded market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, killing at least 16 people and threatening to further stoke sectarian tensions in relatively peaceful areas south of Baghdad.

Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. officials have expressed fears that Sunni insurgents led by al-Qaida are carefully picking their targets to provoke retaliatory violence to derail efforts to stabilize the country.

The blast on Tuesday sent flames through a nearby two-story kebab restaurant, charring the interior. Angry residents demanded better protection and accused authorities of fortifying their own homes and offices at the expense of the public.

"They do not care about the fate of the poor. We demand real, effective security measures to protect us," said 29-year-old Laith Hussein, who helped carry some of the wounded to the hospital.

The predominantly Shiite southern areas have seen a spike in violence and unrest, blamed in part on militants who have fled a security crackdown in Baghdad. The U.S.-led offensive is intended to curb violence and allow the Shiite-led government some breathing room to implement reforms, including proposals to empower minority Sunnis Arabs and help end the insurgency. There has been little evidence, though, of any movement toward those reforms.

Still, Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi appeared to back away from a threat to lead a walkout from the government.

Late Tuesday, al-Hashemi's office issued a statement that he, Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Iraq's Shiite vice president Adel Abdul-Mahdi held talks. The agenda appeared to focus on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's past pledges — including addressing Sunni Arab objections to parts of a constitution adopted in October 2005, disbanding militias and actively seeking national reconciliation.

At least 68 people were killed or found dead nationwide Tuesday, more than half of them apparent victims of so-called sectarian death squads usually run by the Shiite militias. Twenty-five of the bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad, all but five on the predominantly Sunni western side of the Tigris River where sectarian violence appears to be on the rise.

A roadside bomb also killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded another southeast of Baghdad, the military said.

Residents in Baqouba, a volatile city northeast of Baghdad, claimed that a U.S. helicopter opened fire on an elementary school, killing seven students and wounding three. U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said the military was investigating the reports.

"We do all we can to avoid civilian casualties. That's why we're going to look into this to see what happened," Garver said.