December 11, 2008, West Palm Beach, FL (JusticeNewsFlash.com)–Justice informers breaking news: While Kurdish officials met with Arab tribal leaders to negotiate longstanding ethnic tensions, in Kirkuk on Thursday, a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant. Police officials in Kirkuk, the center of Iraq’s northern oil fields, say the explosion killed at least 55 people and appears to be the deadliest attack in Iraq in almost six months.
The suicide bomber exploded in the Abdullah Restaurant just north of the contested oil city of Kirkuk. This northern area of Iraq has seen fewer attacks than other regions, such as Baghdad, but still remains the focus of years of competition and political waring among ethnic groups with rival claims to the city. Government officials are also reporting some 120 people were wounded in the blast.
Kurdish officials further report Arab tribal leaders were having lunch with members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of President Jalal Talabani. The leaders were preparing to attend a meeting, with Talabani, after lunch to discuss ways to defuse tensions among Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen in the Kirkuk area. The restaurant was also filled with families celebrating the final day of the Eid al-Adha religious holiday. Tribal leaders remain dazed and confused with how a group like al-Qaida can continue to claim to be Islamic and murder and injure innocent people on sacred religious holidays like Eid al-Adha.
JNF international war and foreign affairs correspondent for JusticeNewsFlash.com
