Three suicide bombers launched attacks in different parts of Iraq on Monday,
killing at least 27 people and wounding nearly 60 on Monday, police and
politicians said.
A man gestures at the scene of suicide car bomb attacks in
Baghdad, April 22, 2007. [Reuters]
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A parked car bomb also exploded
outside the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, killing one civilian, and a drive-by
shooting wounded two guards at Tunisia's Embassy in the capital, police said.
Monday's first suicide car bomb attack occurred near the northern city of
Mosul at 10:10 a.m. when a suicide attacker detonated his car in front of an
office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the
autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, an official with the group said. At least 10
people were killed and 20 wounded in the attack in Tal Uskuf, a town 9 miles
north of Mosul, said Abdul-Ghani Ali, a KDP official.
Ghanim Hazim, 37, a shop owner in Tal Uskuf, said dozens of people rushed
past his store to the site of the blast to help the wounded, who "were screaming
and asking for help as they lay buried under big pieces of debris."
He said residents of the predominantly Christian town were in deep shock
because it was the first terrorist attack in their tight-knit community since
the Iraq war started.
"This attack shows that no place in Iraq is free from the terrorists and
their evil deeds," Hazim said in an interview as firefighters and police began
removing the dead and wounded.
A suicide car bomber also struck a police station in Baqouba, 35 miles
northeast of Baghdad, at about 11 a.m., killing at least 10 people and wounding
23, police said.
In central Baghdad, a bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in an
Iraqi restaurant in the mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhood of Karradah Mariam,
killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said.
The attack occurred at about 11 a.m. less than 100 yards outside the heavily
fortified Green Zone, home to the US and British embassies and the Iraqi
government's headquarters. At the time, Ryan Crocker, who became the new US
ambassador in Iraq about a month ago, was giving a news conference in the Green
Zone.
The Iranian Embassy also is located in Karradah Mariam, and a parked car bomb
exploded in a parking lot near it at about 12 noon, killing one civilian and
wounding another, said Iraqi police.
At about 11:30 a.m., drive-by shooters opened fire on guards outside the
Tunisian Embassy in the mostly Sunni district of Mansour in western Baghdad,
wounding two of them, police said.