Devastating Double Suicide Attack in Kirkuk – 90 Killed

BREAKING NEWS –
Bombs kill at least 80 in Kirkuk

KIRKUK (Reuters) – At least 80 people were killed in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in a coordinated attack by a suicide truck bomber in a crowded market and a separate car bomb parked on a busy street. Iraqi police said 136 people were wounded in the blasts and warned that the death toll could rise further.

A Reuters cameraman on the scene described carnage after the truck bomb in the market, near an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan , the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The explosion scattered bodies across the market, set dozens of cars on fire and trapped passengers on a bus where they burned to death, the cameraman said.

The car bomb exploded in a commercial area called Iskan, near shops and a bus garage, police said. The two blasts came within minutes of each other, police said.

Vehicles burn after a bomb attack in Kirkuk, oil city in North Iraq. (Slahaldeen Rasheed/Reuters)

This attack seems to be a duplicate of the recent Armili suicide attack with a truck bomb killing 150 Turkmen .

A truck bomb in the remote northern village of Emerli killed at least 140 people, wounded hundreds more, and dragged a peaceful minority community into the maelstrom of civil war. (AFP/Joe Krauss)

OPERATION MARNE AVALANCHE

South of Baghdad, thousands of U.S. troops swooped on a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq safe haven used to reinforce militants fighting in the capital, the military said.

The operation called Marne Avalanche , aims to stem the flow of weapons and militant fighters into the southern part of Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are already fighting hard to clear them out.

In pre-dawn raids, helicopter-borne troops swept into an area the U.S. military said was an al Qaeda safe haven around the Euphrates river valley, 35 km (22 miles) south of Baghdad.