Source: Reuters
* More than 200 wounded, 30 homes destroyed
* Maliki says "don't lose heart" if attacks occur
* U.S. soldiers to leave urban centres by end of month
(Updates toll, adds governor, background)
By Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD, June 20 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 67 people on Saturday as they left a mosque, shortly after the prime minister urged Iraqis not to lose faith if a U.S. military pull-back sparked more violence.
Almost all U.S. soldiers will leave urban centres by June 30 under a bilateral security pact signed last year and the entire force that invaded the country in 2003 must be gone by 2012.
Saturday's attack was the deadliest in more than a year.
"Don't lose heart if a breach of security occurs here or there," Nuri al-Maliki told leaders from the ethnic Turkmen community, reiterating a warning that insurgents were likely to take advantage of the U.S. pull-back to launch more attacks.
Analysts warn there may also be a spike in violence by mainly Sunni Islamist insurgents, including al Qaeda, and other violent groups ahead of a parliamentary election next January.
Hours after Maliki spoke, a suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives as crowds of worshippers left a Shi'ite Muslim mosque near Kirkuk, a northern city contested by Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds that sits over vast oil reserves.
Sixty-seven people died, including women and children, and more than 200 were wounded as about 30 homes made of clay bricks disintegrated in the blast zone around the al-Rasul mosque in Taza, said Kirkuk governor Abdul Rahman Mustafa.
"This is a catastrophe for Kirkuk province and especially the town of Taza," Mustafa said.
It was the worst bombing in Iraq since 68 people were killed in a twin bomb attack in Baghdad in March last year.
Such high death tolls remain stubbornly common in Iraq despite a sharp fall in overall violence. Sixty people were killed by two female suicide bombers outside the Shi'ite Iman Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in Baghdad this April, and 50 died in a suicide bomb blast in a restaurant near Kirkuk in December.
"I was sitting in my house when suddenly a powerful blast shook the ground under me," said Hussain Nashaat, 35, his head wrapped in white bandages. "I found myself covered in blood and ran outside in a daze. My lovely neighbourhood was just rubble."
There was chaos at Kirkuk's Azadi Hospital, where sirens wailed as workers rushed blood-splattered civilians into the wards. Outside, security officials brandished assault rifles to stop traffic as pick-up trucks raced through the gates.
NEW TACTICS
The attacks cast doubt on the ability of Iraqi security forces to take over after U.S. troops leave. But a string of devastating bomb attacks in April was followed by what in Iraqi terms was a relative calm in May and June.
It is not clear if that is due to the efforts of Iraqi police and soldiers or if it means insurgent groups, beaten back over the past two years in most of Iraq, now lack the organisation and support to keep up the momentum.
Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said al-Qaeda was resorting to paying people to fight for it, as well as recruiting some Shi'ites drawn by the cash. He said it had also turned to criminal activities to raise funds.
"Instead of recruiting people through faith or ideology, as it was in the past, now they are paying money to recruit people," Khalaf told reporters.
The sectarian bloodshed and insurgency unleashed by the invasion peaked in 2006/07, but ethnically mixed cities such as Mosul and Baquba remain dangerous. A suicide car bomber killed four policemen near Falluja in western Anbar province, once the heartland of the insurgency, on Saturday.
Baghdad has also continued to see a steady stream of bombings and shootings, and Kirkuk is viewed as a potential flashpoint for a broader conflict between Arabs and Kurds.
On Saturday, the U.S. military handed Iraqi forces control of a base in the capital's sprawling Sadr City slum, a hotbed of support for fiery anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and a major former battleground for U.S. forces.
From there rockets and mortar shells often rained on the fortified Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi officials are based.
"The land we stand on today has been bought at a very high price," said U.S Major General Daniel Bolger. (Additional reporting by Mustafa Mahmoud in Kirkuk; Waleed Ibrahim and Muhanad Mohammed in Baghdad; Writing by Michael Christie and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Matthew Jones)
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Bomb kills 32 in n.Iraq as U.S. troops leave
30 Jun 2009 18:42:17 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Car bomb tears through market in Kirkuk
* U.S. troops quit last of Iraq's cities
* Military parade marks "National Sovereignty Day"
(Updates toll, Obama reaction to troop withdrawal)
By Tim Cocks and Muhanad Mohammed
BAGHDAD, June 30 (Reuters) - Hours after U.S. troops handed over control of Iraq's cities to its domestic security forces, a car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100 on Tuesday, police said.
The blast tore through a busy market in a largely Kurdish part of the city, which is regarded as a potential flashpoint between ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.
The U.S. pullback to rural bases from towns and cities is the first step towards a full U.S. withdrawal by 2012 agreed under a bilateral security pact.
Some Iraqis fear it leaves them open to attack by insurgent groups but many Iraqis celebrated what the government named "National Sovereignty Day", more than six years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
Citizens and Iraqi soldiers drove around the streets of the capital in vehicles draped in flowers and Iraqi flags. Signs were draped on Baghdad's many concrete blast walls reading "Iraq: my nation, my glory, my honour".
"This day, which we consider a national celebration, is an achievement made by all Iraqis," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a televised address.
"Our incomplete sovereignty and the presence of foreign troops is the most serious legacy we have inherited (from Saddam). Those who think that Iraqis are unable to defend their country are committing a fatal mistake."
The day's festivities included a parade in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic district, viewed by Iraqis as the ultimate symbol of the foreign military presence until local forces took control of it in January.
In a display of the military muscle Iraq will use to combat a stubborn insurgency, thousands of soldiers and police paraded on foot or in U.S.-donated Humvees, armoured cars and tanks in a compound where Saddam's forces once staged elaborate displays.
U.S. and local officials said the pullback of U.S. troops showed how far the country had come since it was almost torn apart by tit-for-tat sectarian killing in 2006/2007.
But the Kirkuk bomb underscored the fragility of the security gains. Iraq is less violent that it has been for years, but militants still stage frequent attacks.
In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama lauded the U.S. troop withdrawal as an important milestone but warned of "difficult days" ahead.
Frantic relatives of those who had been in the area dug through the rubble in Kirkuk, searching for missing loved ones.
"I went to the market to get some bread and there was a huge explosion," said Taseen Azad, 21, who was lightly wounded. "I saw people falling on the ground, shops burning and dead people. Then someone took me to the hospital."
The U.S. military said four U.S. soldiers based in Baghdad had died of combat-related injuries on Monday.
OIL CONTRACTS
In another sign of what Maliki called the start of a new era, foreign oil executives attended an auction at a Green Zone hotel for eight oil and gas fields in the country's first major energy contracts for almost four decades.
Iraq needs the expertise of the oil majors to restore its oil infrastructure, hit hard by sanctions and war.
But its ambitions soon struck commercial realities as it found that there was a big gulf between what it was willing to pay for the 20-year service contracts and the fees the companies were willing to accept.
A consortium led by British-based BP accepted a deal to develop the biggest oilfield, the 17-billion barrel Rumaila in the south, but only after a group led by Exxon Mobil of the United States had rejected the government offer.
Awards to U.S. and British firms could anger opponents of the invasion, who have said the war was designed to give Western oil companies control over Iraqi oil reserves. U.S. and British officials deny the accusations.
The tight security at the auction, and the presence of bodyguards with earpieces escorting the international energy executives, was a reminder of Iraq's still uncertain stability.
The political situation also remains unsettled. Tensions have grown between Baghdad and the minority Kurds in Iraq's north, and all eyes are now on a parliamentary election in January that will test Maliki and Iraq's fledgling democracy.
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