Iraqi officials: Bombing in contested town kills 32 people
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated his pickup truck loaded with explosives, killing 32 people on Tuesday evening at a marketplace in an Iraqi town contested by both the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish regional authorities, Iraqi officials said.
The powerful explosion in Tuz Khormato also wounded at least 80 people. At least six members of Iraq’s security forces were among the dead, Iraqi police and hospital officials told The Associated Press.
The town — claimed by both Iraq’s central government and the country’s Kurdish region — is about 210 kilometres (130 miles) north of Baghdad and historically an ethnically diverse area that is home to Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiite Turkmens. But in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq it has also witnessed outbreaks of deadly sectarian violence that have escalated following the Kurdish region’s independence vote in September.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack.