Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Not good

Not good at all:

Just after 11 a.m., a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing at least 17 demonstrators and wounding 47 others, according to Iraqi security officials.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni Arab extremists. Nonetheless, many in the crowd blamed Turkmen extremists for the attack, and within minutes a mob of enraged Kurds began attacking Turkmen political offices and setting their buildings ablaze...

Farouk Abdullah, a senior Turkmen politician, said that offices of every Turkmen party had been attacked and that Kurdish rioters had destroyed a number of other Turkmen buildings. "We don't know why they attacked us," he said. "We did not have anything to do with the explosion."

By the end of the day, the riot and violence by Kurds against Turkmens had become one of the most severe ethnic skirmishes in Kirkuk since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The city has long been considered a tinderbox because of its volatile mix of Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs.


Kirkuk is one of two places where the oil is. On the edge of the Kurdish region, or deep in the heart of the Southern Shiia region.

The Sunnis only hope of a stake is either being given one (unlikely) or fighting for one, and that place would be Kirkuk.

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