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| Three car bombs kill 7, wound 78 in Iraq's Kirkuk Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:17 AM PST KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Three car bombs aimed at Iraqi security forces killed at least seven people and wounded 78 in the northern city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, police and hospital sources said.
The explosions were the latest in a series of attacks on police and soldiers by insurgents as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw by the end of this year. Kirkuk, inhabited by a mix of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and others, sits on some of Iraq's biggest oil reserves and is one of the disputed territories at the centre of tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraq's central government in Baghdad. A police source said the first blast wounded an Iraqi police official, while the second was aimed at a police patrol. The third was outside a building used by Kurdish security forces. "Three car bombs exploded in quick succession. We are on high alert and fear there may be more car bombs," the source said. "We've sealed the areas around where the explosions occurred, we are evacuating the wounded and we have intensified searches at checkpoints in other areas." Police and hospital sources said seven people including three policemen were killed and 78 wounded in the blasts in a residential area of southern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad. One hospital source said many of the wounded were policemen, but was unable to give an exact figure. A police official said many cars and houses had been badly damaged and firefighters were trying to put out fires. Kirkuk province police chief Jamal Tahir said an investigation showed the third explosion, which targeted a Kurdish security building, was carried out by a suicide bomber. "What we have discovered is that at least one attack was carried out by a suicide truck bomber," Tahir told reporters. "Militant armed groups had threatened to target security forces in Kirkuk for recent success in pursuing terrorists and bringing them to justice." The blast also damaged a branch office of Kurdish premier Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, a police official said. While violence in Iraq has declined sharply from the height of sectarian warfare in 2006-07, bombings still occur daily, and Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militia stage lethal attacks. Nearly 200 people died and hundreds were wounded last month in bomb attacks bearing the hallmarks of Sunni Arab insurgents. "How long will this bad and unstable situation last? We call on the state and the government of Kirkuk to take tough security measures to prevent such incidents from happening again. The victims are poor people," said Kirkuk resident Ahmed Zebari. (Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Janet Lawrence) Copyright © 2011 Reuters | ||
| Egypt counts cost of turmoil, protesters undaunted Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:17 AM PST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptians counted the economic cost of more than two weeks of turmoil on Wednesday as re-invigorated protesters flocked again to Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand President Hosni Mubarak quit immediately.
A day after Egyptians staged one of their biggest protests in the capital, Tahrir Square remained crowded although no demonstration had been scheduled. Karam Mohamed, from Beheira province in the Nile Delta, said the protests were growing. "We are putting pressure on them little by little and in the end they will fall." Protesters said the organisers were working on plans to move on to the state radio and television building on Friday, the day of the next big scheduled demonstration. "I think people outside will make crowds outside the radio and television ... President Mubarak will fall soon, in three or four days," said Mohamed Sadik, a Cairo engineer. Security sources said a protester was killed and several suffered gunshot wounds in clashes with police in a desert province far from Cairo on Tuesday and Wednesday, the first serious confrontation since the "Day of Wrath" on Jan. 28 led to the army's deployment on the streets. With Mubarak refusing to step down before his term ends in September, the government has tried to portray itself as a bulwark against militant Islam and called for a return to normality for the sake of the economy. In Berlin, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on the Egyptian government to end emergency law and implement more political reform, echoing comments made by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday. The Obama administration appears worried that Mubarak's government will not make meaningful changes in the most populous Arab nation, a strategic U.S. partner due to its peace treaty with Israel and control of the Suez Canal. Vice President Omar Suleiman, who has been holding talks with opposition groups, has said there was now a road map to hand over power, but protesters have been unmoved by the plan. DEATH AT IN THE DESERT Government attempts to defuse the popular anger which erupted on Jan. 25 have so far fallen flat and the economy is suffering. "We cannot bear this situation for a long time and we must end this crisis as soon as possible," Suleiman said on Tuesday. Analysts at Credit Agricole bank estimate the crisis is costing Egypt $310 million a day. Ezzsteel, Egypt's largest steel maker, reported its plants were operating below full capacity but said an investigation involving its chairman, who had held a senior position in Mubarak's party, would not affect company activity. Chairman Ahmed Ezz denied allegations about vote rigging in parliamentary elections last November. In Oslo, Statoil ASA said it was no longer drilling in Egypt. The Suez Canal, a vital source of foreign currency, reported a 1.6 percent drop in revenue in January from December. But the figure was up from a year earlier, and officials have said operations have been unaffected by the turmoil. Likewise, a feared collapse in the Egyptian pound has failed to materialise although the authorities have acted in support. The central bank said on Wednesday it was prepared to intervene directly in the currency market again after an intervention on Tuesday. "We will intervene when we see the market is not orderly. If it is not, we will use our tools," Deputy Governor Hisham Ramez told Reuters, saying the market so far was quiet and orderly. The Egyptian pound slipped slightly in early trade after the central bank had stepped in to boost it by more than 1 percent on Tuesday when it hit a six-year low. CLASH IN THE DESERT The protester died when security forces clashed with a crowd of around 3,000 in New Valley, a province about 500 km (300 miles) from Cairo that includes a desert oasis. It appeared to be the first serious clash since Jan. 28, when police all but disappeared from Egyptian streets after they had beaten, teargassed and fired rubber bullets at protesters. Mubarak sent the army onto the streets that night, but several days of looting and lawlessness followed the withdrawal of police and many prisoners escaped from prison. Al Qaeda's Iraq-based arm the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) attacked the Egyptian government for failing to implement strict Islamic law, and said it was better for Muslims to die fighting their government rather than live under its rule. It called on Egyptian Muslims to free all prisoners from their nation's jails after Suleiman said on Tuesday that militants linked to al Qaeda were among the thousands who escaped from jails. "Don't rest until you have rescued them all, then destroy them (the prisons) with the aid of God, so that not a single stone remains standing," it said in a statement on Islamist websites. The ISI's links to Egyptian militants and the strength of its influence are unclear, but some analysts said the group may have inspired a deadly attack on an Egyptian church last month. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation seen as Egypt's largest opposition group, renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt decades ago and has warned that government efforts to stamp out its influence could push some towards more radical ideas. Many of those who swelled the ranks of protesters on Tuesday were joining for the first time, and some said they were inspired by a Google executive's tearful televised interview after he was detained by security forces. Google had launched a service to help Egyptians circumvent government restrictions on using the social network Twitter, enabling them to dial a telephone number and leave a voice mail that would then be sent on the online service. (Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Dina Zayed, Marwa Awad, Andrew Hammond, Alexander Dziadosz, Yasmine Saleh, Sherine El Madany, and Alison Williams in Cairo; Erika Solomon in Dubai; Brian Rohan in Berlin; Writing by David Stamp, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) Copyright © 2011 Reuters |
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