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Cairo
29 August 2009
Two separate explosions in northern Iraq have killed at least 15 people
and wounded 30 others Saturday, as the security situation across the
country remains tense. Iraqi political leaders and ordinary citizens
condemned the recent rise in violence.
Bomb attacks in two northern Iraqi towns have
caused more deaths and injuries Saturday, while the security situation
across the country remains tense.
Baghdad TV showed pools of
blood and chunks of cinderblock from the explosion of a bomb in the
Kurdish village of Sinjar, near Mosul. The same village was hit by a
pair of suicide-bombers on August 13.
Eyewitnesses say that
Saturday's bomb attack struck a local market and that the casualties
include many women and children. Members of the small Yazidi sect which
live in the area were the apparent targets.
A suicide
car-bombing, earlier, killed five policeman and several civilians near
an Iraqi police station in the town of Shirqat, close to Tikrit. At
least a dozen people were also wounded.
Iraqi Foreign Minister
Hoshyar Zebari, who held a press conference with Iran's visiting
foreign minister, condemned the recent upsurge in terrorism:
He
says that he condemns these acts [of terrorism] and deplores the
[number of] victims of these criminal and terrorist attacks. The Iraqi
people, he insists, will persist and overcome these attacks, and raise
its [their] voice to show [and] proclaim that it [they] will not be
silenced [by terrorism].
Meanwhile, in Baghdad, several dozen
demonstrators carried signs and chanted "down with terrorism,"
according to Al Baghdadia TV. One demonstrator complained that the
Iraqi government was "not doing enough to protect its citizens."
A young man with a beard also denounced the recent wave of bombings, insisting that everyone has been affected by terrorism:
He
says that from the bottom of our souls and everything that makes us
Iraqis, we condemn these cowardly attacks that have hit women,
children, the elderly, the young and all other categories of society.
Many
Iraqi members of parliament and other politicians condemned the recent
terror attacks in interviews on Iraqi TV, with some of them accusing
Iran, some of them accusing Syria and others accusing Al Qa'eda of the
bombings.
Two massive truck bombs in Baghdad, on August 19, killed 95 people and wounded close to 600 others.
Violence
across Iraq has decreased during the past twelve months, but a number
of high-profile attacks continue to plague the country.
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