Feb. 2, 2004
Bomb Death Toll Rises In Iraq
Kurdish Militias Devastated By Suicide Bombing; 67 Lives Lost
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Play CBS Video Video Twin Suicide Blasts In Iraq
Two suicide bombers launched attacks on two Kurdish parties in Iraq on Sunday killing at least 57 people and wounding many more. U.S. coalition leaders react to the bombings.
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Video Bloody Day In Iraq
In Iraq, three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, and another attack on a police station killed nine Iraqis. Allen Pizzey reports.
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Video Al Qaeda And Iraq
U.S. officials say they have evidence to link a top al Qaeda operative to at least three terrorist attacks in Iraq, proving al Qaeda is trying to establish a foothold there, David Martin reports.
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A seriously wounded Iraqi Kurdish man is watched over by a woman, a day after he suffered wounds in one of two suicide bombing attacks. (AP)
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The dead victim of a suicide bomber lays on the floor of a hospital in Irbil, northern Iraq. (AP)
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Peshmergas with the Kurdistan Democratic Party walk through the room inside the KDP headquarters in Irbil, where a suicide bombing took place on Sunday. (AP)
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
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Interactive Saddam's Judgment Background on the former Iraqi leader's alleged crimes, his life and capture, plus video and photos.
No group claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks, the bloodiest in Iraq in six months. But American and Kurdish officials suspected foreign militants or Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda-linked Islamic militant group operating in Kurdish areas of the north.
"All indications point to the involvement of Islamic terrorists with al Qaeda connections," Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern sector of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish enclave, said from Washington.
"This demonstrates that the terrorists are losing and this will only strengthen our resolve."
In other developments:
American soldiers will gradually move to the edge of the city as more Iraqi Civil Defense Forces and police graduate from U.S.-supervised training, said Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, which is in charge of Baghdad.
"It is a necessary and correct step," he said.
Dempsey's announcement comes two weeks after a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a gate of the U.S.-led coalition's headquarters, killing at least 31 people and injuring more than 120. Still, Dempsey said the number of insurgent attacks have gone down with the arrest of 118 people during the last three weeks.
"The insurgency in Baghdad is much less organized than it was a month ago and much more fearful that it was a month ago," he said.
On Sunday, a rocket attack on a U.S. supplies base in Balad north of the capital Baghdad killed one American soldier and wounded 12, including two seriously. Another soldier was killed Sunday and two others were hurt when their Humvee overturned near the town of Haditha.
The two deaths mean 524 U.S. service members have been killed since the Iraq conflict began in March.
The near-simultaneous attacks on the Kurdish organizations on Sunday killed many of the top leaders of the two parties, who were gathered to greet hundreds of ordinary Kurds on the first day of the four-day Eid-al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, holiday.
The suicide attacks were carried out by two men dressed as Islamic clerics with explosives wired to their bodies, Kurdish television said.
One of them joined the Eid celebrations at the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP, which controls Irbil province, and the other sauntered into the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, centered in neighboring Sulaimaniyah province, eight miles away.
Guards said they did not search people because of the tradition of receiving guests during the holiday.
At about 10:45 a.m., the two bombers, standing amid well-wishers waiting to shake hands with Kurdish leaders, detonated the explosives. Walls caved in and the ceiling collapsed in one office.
Officials said 267 people were injured in the attacks.
The U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council declared a three-day period of national mourning beginning Monday during which flags will fly at half-staff and Koranic verses will be recited.
The KDP leadership took the heavier blow because it is based in Irbil, 200 miles north of Baghdad. The dead included the Irbil region's governor Akram Mintik, the deputy governor, KDP Deputy Prime Minister Sami Abdul Rahman, his two sons and ministers in the Kurdish administration.
The PUK's military commander also was killed.
Militias of both parties fought alongside U.S. soldiers during last year's invasion of Iraq, but also have been rivals for power in the Kurdish self-rule region since 1994.
The Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein in 1991 after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War but were suppressed by Baghdad. International intervention provided Kurds a self-rule region under U.S.-British protection. The Kurds want to maintain that in a future federal Iraq.
Washington favors federalism, which would give Iraq's major groups — Shiite and Sunni Arabs, and Kurds — a degree of autonomy within a unified nation-state.
However, the Kurdish aspirations make Arabs and Turkomen, an ethnic group related to the Turks, uneasy. Kurdish unity in the aftermath of the suicide attacks is likely to increase that unease.
At stake is not only political power but also control over the country's oil wealth, much of it centered around the northern city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen as their own.
©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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