Twin Bombs Kill Twenty Two at Police Station in Iraq

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — Twin bombs that appeared timed to lure policemen out of their fortified headquarters in a northern Iraqi city killed 22 people on Thursday, most of them police officers. Scores were wounded in the double blasts in Kirkuk, and a third explosion 45 minutes later on a road to a city hospital brought the number of injured to at least 60, said provincial health director Siddiq Oman.
At one hospital, bloodied and bandaged victims lay on the floor because the beds were already filled with patients. A patient blackened by the smoke from one of the explosions, sat on a hospital bed, his head bandaged and bloodied. Around him a chaotic scene unfolded of doctors and nurses tended patients as security officials brought in more victims.
A police truck pulled into the hospital driveway with four bodies laying in the bed of the truck. It was not clear whether they were alive or dead.
Kirkuk police Capt. Abdul Salam Zangana said the first explosion, in a central Kirkuk parking lot at about 9 a.m., sent policemen rushing outside their secure headquarters compound to investigate. That's when the second blast hit, Zangana said.
The double blasts killed 22 people, most of them policemen, and wounded more than 52, he said. It also heavily damaged the police headquarters, where rescue workers frantically combed through the rubble to find victims.
In the parking lot of the police station, vehicles were pockmarked with shrapnel and the carcass of one vehicle lay over a fence. Bloodied pools of water dotted the parking lot.
The third bomb set cars and trucks ablaze when it exploded about 550 yards (500 meters) away, targeting a police patrol near a mosque, said Zangana, who oversees security units at the hospital where the dead and wounded were brought. Zangana said eight people were wounded in that blast.
Together, the explosions marked the worst strike in Kirkuk since early February, when a suicide bomber at the city's Kurdish security headquarters set off a series of rapid-fire attacks that killed seven and wounded up to 80 people.
Located 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Kirkuk has been an ethnic flashpoint for years among Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen who each claim the oil-rich city as their own. Tensions directed at the mostly Arab national police and predominantly Kurdish peshmerga forces have been especially rife.