WORLD> Middle East
Suicide bomb blast kills 23 at funeral in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-24 09:03

BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber struck a tent filled Monday with Kurdish funeral mourners, unleashing a huge fireball that killed at least 23 people in a northern town where Kurds and Arabs are competing for power.

Also Monday, Turkey's visiting president pressed the Iraqi government to crack down on Kurdish rebels who stage cross-border raids into Turkish territory from sanctuaries in northern Iraq.

US soldiers provide security as US and Iraqi troops distributed humanitarian aid in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, March 23, 2009. [Agencies]

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The provincial security office said 23 people were killed and 34 wounded in the suicide attack in the town of Jalula some 80 miles (120 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad.

A member of the provincial security committee, Amir Rifaat, said 24 people were killed and 28 wounded. The difference could not be immediately reconciled.

Karim Khudadat, whose father was being mourned, said he was receiving visitors when the bomber struck.

"I was with my relatives outside the tent receiving people who came to offer condolences when suddenly the explosion took place," Khudadat said. "Suddenly a huge flame engulfed the tent and I was wounded in my head and legs."

Elsewhere, eight people were killed and 10 wounded in a bombing near a bus stop west of Baghdad, and a policeman died and eight people were wounded in a suicide blast at a market in the northern town of Tal Afar.

A series of high-profile bombings this month has raised concern that insurgents may be regrouping as the US begins to scale down combat operations and hand over security responsibility to the Iraqis ahead of a planned American troop withdrawal by the end of 2011.

The attack in Jalula was noteworthy because it points to rising tensions in the north between Kurds and Arabs over control of a swath of territory that the Kurds want to incorporate into their self-ruled region.

US officials believe Kurdish-Arab tension is among the major flashpoint issues threatening Iraqi stability now that the threat posed by Sunni and Shiite insurgents has been diminished.

Last August a suicide bomber killed 25 people, mostly police volunteers, in Jalula, a predominantly Arab town where the Iraqi army forced out Kurdish fighters of the self-ruled Kurdish government last year after a standoff that US officials feared would lead to armed conflict.

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