Three suicide car bomb attacks against offices in a Kurdish town in Iraq killed at least 25 people on Sunday, most of them Kurdish forces veterans volunteering to re-enlist, officials said.
Three suicide car bomb attacks against offices in a Kurdish town in Iraq killed at least 25 people on Sunday, most of them Kurdish forces veterans volunteering to re-enlist, officials said.
"At 10:30 this morning (0730 GMT), three car bombs struck Qara Tapah," said Mayor Wahab Ahmed, who was lightly wounded in the attack.
Qara Tapah lies close to Jalawla, a key battleground northeast of Baghdad between the Iraqi army and ISIL terrorists.
The mayor said the three car bombs targeted his office, a building used by the Kurds' asayesh internal security service and an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.
Ahmed said nearby buildings used by the electricity department and the Kurdish peshmerga forces' veterans affairs bureau were also seriously damaged in the explosions.
A high-ranking security official in the autonomous Kurdish regional government put the death toll at 27 and said most of the dead were peshmerga veterans who had volunteered to return to active duty to fight ISIL.
"Twenty-four of the victims are peshmerga veterans," the official said.
"They had come to join the front against ISIL. There are still victims trapped in the debris," he said.
A local federal army official could confirm 25 deaths.
A woman was killed and two children wounded when another bomb targeted a policeman's home in Baquba's Shifta neighbourhood, the same sources said.
Bomb Kills Police Chief of Iraq’s Troubled Anbar
A roadside bomb killed the police chief of Iraq's battleground province of Anbar Sunday, officials said.
The attack came near the provincial capital of Ramadi, one of the few areas between Baghdad and the Syrian border not controlled by fighters loyal to ISIL, provincial and police officials said.
"Major General Ahmed Saddag was killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) blast targeting his convoy this morning," Faleh al-Issawi, the deputy head of the provincial council, told AFP.
"The blast hit the convoy as it was passing through the Abu Risha district," just northwest of Ramadi, he said.
A senior police official in the province confirmed Saddag's death and said four other policemen were also wounded in the attack.
"The police chief was leading forces involved in an operation to retake Twei" from ISIL, Colonel Abdulrahman al-Janabi said.
He said clashes between government forces and the 'jihadists' had erupted in the area on Saturday evening.
