A suicide car bomber targeting a police convoy in northern Iraq has killed at least ten people and wounded more than 22 others.The attack targeted police guards outside a building of the state-owned North Oil Company in al-Wasiti district.The bomb exploded as the police were changing shifts on Wednesday.
Police said that all the dead were from the Oil Protection Force, a department of Iraq's state police. "The policemen were travelling home on a bus when they were targeted by a suicide car bomber," Lieutenant-Colonel Ghazi Mohammad Rashid, a police spokesman, said. "All that was left of the bus were its seats, the officers' Kalashnikovs, and human body parts," he said.
Major-General Torhan Yousuf, the deputy police chief of Kirkuk province, told the AFP news agency that the bomber had approached the bus from behind, before driving alongside and crashing into it causing the explosion."At this moment we think the attack bears the hallmark of al-Qaeda," he said.
Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds are competing for power in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad.
The majority Kurds want to incorporate the area into their autonomous northern region, while other groups want it to remain under central government control.
Courtesy: Al Jazeera
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