Iraq bomb kills 48 in volatile north
By Timothy Williams
Friday, December 12, 2008
BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber attacked a restaurant on Thursday where Sunni Arabs
and Kurds were meeting to ease friction in the tense northern city of Kirkuk.
At least 48 people were killed in the bombing, apparently aimed at provoking
extremists along widening ethnic fault lines just as American plans to withdraw
militarily from Iraq became official.
Nearly 100 were wounded in the bombing, which was the deadliest in Iraq in six
months. It occurred north of Kirkuk in a huge restaurant packed with as many as
3,000 people to celebrate the end of the religious holiday Id al-Adha. Several
women and children were reported among the dead.
"All of a sudden we heard a very loud explosion," said Shirzad Mowfak Zangana,
a supervisor at the restaurant. "Two of the walls collapsed, and then the next
thing I remember is that I felt blood covering my face. People were screaming.
Children were crying. Smoke filled all three dining rooms."
The apparent target was symbolic and incendiary: a meeting of Kurdish officials
and Sunni Arab members of the Awakening, mostly former insurgents now working
for the government, trying to reduce tension between Arabs and Kurds, each with
claims on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Even before the bombing, the fear of violence in Kirkuk was so high that the
city was exempted from nationwide provincial elections, scheduled for Jan. 31.
The bombing appears to be a direct challenge to the government of Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the United States prepares to draw down its
troops despite questions about whether Iraq's security forces will be able to
control the country.
Major General Turhan Yusef, the Kirkuk police chief, said investigators had not
determined who was responsible for the attack.
"We have received some intelligence and are analyzing the information," he said.
But the restaurant is in an area where Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia a largely Iraqi
insurgent group which American intelligence officials say has foreign
leadership has been active. The bombing, experts said, also bore the hallmarks
of previous suicide bombings carried out by the group: a symbolic target, many
civilian casualties, an aim to provoke violence in opposing groups.
The American Embassy in Baghdad and the United States military command in
Baghdad released a joint statement in which they condemned the attack and
blamed the militant group for it.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq seeks to divide Iraqi communities and halt the progress
Iraqis are making in building a stable, inclusive and tolerant society," the
statement read. "We stand ready to work with the government and the people of
Iraq to combat Al Qaeda and other terrorists and to help pave the way for a
secure, democratic and prosperous Iraq."
In 2006, a bombing in Samarra, north of Baghdad, destroyed part of a shrine
holy to Shiites and set off a whirlwind of sectarian attacks and counterattacks
that did not end for nearly two years.
While sectarian tensions have quieted in much of the country, strong ethnic
divisions remain in the north between Sunni Arabs and Kurds, who are competing
for control of land and other resources.
The area where the bombing occurred, about 25 miles north of Kirkuk on the road
to Erbil, is one of the most heterogeneous in Iraq, with populations of Arabs,
Kurds and Turkmens. The attack also seemed to send the message that despite
assertions by the American military and the Iraqi government that they have
vanquished Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the extremists are still capable of doing
enormous damage.
"The real objective is to sow division between the various communities and
inflame passions among the extremists among them of whom there are plenty in
all the communities and set them up against one another," said Joost
Hiltermann, the director of the Istanbul office of the International Crisis
Group and an expert on Kurdish politics.
"If it happened in a Kurdish restaurant, where there were Arabs eating, the
Kurds will blame the Arabs and the Arabs will blame the Kurds for not
protecting them," he said.
The attack tapped into the political tensions over the unresolved question of
who should govern Kirkuk Arabs, Kurds or Turkmens and whether the city and
surrounding areas should become part of Kurdistan.
The restaurant where the bombing occurred, Abdullah, had been built within the
past year and had quickly become a popular spot for local leaders to meet and
local residents to eat. In addition to three dining rooms, the restaurant
featured gardens, a large parking lot and a small outdoor playground.
It was owned by a Kurdish man and was a place where a cross-section of the
area's ethnic groups would come and eat in peace. It was well known for its
tight security: Before being allowed entry, diners were frisked by a security
officer. Abdullah is affiliated with another Kirkuk restaurant of the same name
where a car bomb in 2007 killed 6 people and wounded 25 others.
The suicide bombing on Thursday occurred about 2 p.m. during a holiday
celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac as an act of
obedience to God. Much of the country takes at least three days off for the
holiday.
The bomber entered the restaurant and stopped at a point between the three
dining rooms before detonating his explosives, said Yadger Abdullah, director
of the Kirkuk police.
Waheed Hameed, a Kurdish jeweler, said he and his son typically had lunch or
dinner at the restaurant daily because it was known for its safety. They were
there on Thursday when the bomb exploded, sending shrapnel into his son's face
and left leg.
"The restaurant was full of bodies, and the injured were asking for help in
Arabic, Kurdish and Turkmen," said Hameed, 50. "I heard their screams. The
children were crying and the women were shouting, 'God is great.' "
Shokria Aziz, 49, said the bomb had wounded her four daughters and killed two
of her closest friends.
"My family came to the restaurant with my neighbors, and suddenly the place was
turned upside down," she said.
It was unclear whether the bomber reached the meeting between the Kurd and
Sunni Arab officials. President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, was to have met with
the officials later but was not in Kirkuk when the explosion occurred. He
arrived after the attack and consoled victims and their relatives, said Azad
Jindyani, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Talabani's
political party.
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Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
