At least 50 dead in Iraq suicide blasts
Top Kurdish official killed; many people wounded
Sunday, February 1, 2004 Posted: 9:54 AM EST (1454 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- At least 50 people were killed, including a top Kurdish official, and many more were wounded in nearly simultaneous suicide attacks Sunday morning at the offices of two Kurdish political parties in the northern Iraq town of Erbil, officials said.
"It's a very chaotic situation," said Qubad Talabani, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
A number of walls collapsed at the PUK headquarters and "many people seem to be trapped under rubble," he said in an interview from Kirkuk.
Among those killed was Sami Abdul Rahman, the de facto deputy prime minister for the Erbil region and a top Kurdish Democratic Party leader, coalition sources said.
Both attacks occurred at around 11 a.m. (3 a.m. ET). Each office was filled with people celebrating the start of the four day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, a main Muslim holiday.
Talabani said the explosion at PUK headquarters apparently came from inside the building.
Talabani said his father, Jalal Talabani, PUK founder and secretary-general, was not in the building at the time. But said more than one senior Kurdish officials may be among the casualties, he said.
"We do anticipate they [senior officials] would have been at the building at the time of the explosion," Talabani said.
A coalition official said medical personnel from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division were assisting with the wounded and other coalition personnel were on hand to aid the investigation.
Talabani said the PUK also was organizing a convoy of medical workers and ambulances to travel from Sulaimaniya to Erbil.
Saturday bombings kill 12
On Saturday, two bombings in Iraq killed 12 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded at least 45 others, according to the U.S. military and news agency reports.
A car bomb exploded early Saturday at a police station in the northern city of Mosul. It was payday at the station. The blast killed nine people and wounded at least 45 others, according to news reports.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition ground forces, said more such attacks are likely.
"What we're seeing here is clearly a continued attempt and a more concentrated effort by the enemy to try to get all the Iraqis that are cooperating with the coalition to break away and not provide us that support that is so crucial to getting to economic progress and the transition to sovereignty," Sanchez said.
Also Saturday, a roadside bomb attack on a U.S. 4th Infantry Division convoy traveling between the northeast Iraqi towns of Tikrit and Kirkuk killed three soldiers.
A military spokesman said the attack happened 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Kirkuk. The deaths bring to 524 the number of U.S. forces killed in the Iraq war, including 366 from hostile fire.
On Saturday night, a blast rocked a densely populated Baghdad neighborhood southeast of the city center. An eyewitness said two rockets slammed into the neighborhood, an enclave long populated by Palestinian refugees, and he said he believes there were many casualties.
On Friday, the United Nations said it expected to send advisers to Iraq soon to assess the possibility of holding direct elections before the country regains its sovereignty. (Full story)
The United States has said it isn't practical to hold direct elections for a transitional national assembly before a sovereign Iraqi government takes control June 30. The Americans have suggested a caucus-style plan to choose the legislature by the end of May.
Adnan Pachachi, who served his last day in the one-month rotating presidency of the Iraqi Governing Council on Saturday, told reporters the council would decide how to choose a transitional assembly and would not be bound by U.N. findings. He said the United Nations is serving in an advisory capacity only.
"The United Nations presents to us recommendations, not decisions, and we are to decide if we accept these recommendations or not," Pachachi said.
Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and others favor direct elections over caucuses.
A U.S. military official predicted the walk-up to independence could spawn more violence in Iraq.
"As we get closer to Iraqi sovereignty, we expect to see an uptick in the amount of violence that we have in the country of which we are fully prepared to handle," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.
CNN's Jane Arraf, Gaven Morris and Kevin Flower in Baghdad contributed to this report
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