UPDATED: Abadi’s party office in Kirkuk sustains 2nd armed attack in a week

Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s political party has sustained a second assault in a week by unknown individuals, sources were quoted saying on Thursday.

The source told Alsumaria News that the office of Islamic Dawa Party, located at the mainly-Turkmen Tiseen neighborhood in central Kirkuk, sustained an attack with a grenade by unknown persons. The source said the attack did not leave any damages, but added that police forces cordoned the facility off.

Earlier reports had told of a similar attack on Monday on the same facility.

“The current crisis between Baghdad and Erbil has caused a surge in attacks targeting partisan offices in Kirkuk,” Dawa Party office director on Kirkuk, Ghofran Khedr, said in a statement quoted by National News Center (NNC), an Iraqi website. “This evening, and though there was a police car parked outside the office, attackers, boarding a car, threw a grenade at the outer gate then fled away”.

Kheder confirmed that was the second attack this week.

Kirkuk has been at the center of the political crisis which erupted between Baghdad and Erbil after the latter had held a controversial referendum on independence from Iraq in September, including Kirkuk as a voting constituency.

The Iraqi government had removed Kirkuk’s governor, Najm al-Din Karim, a Kurdish politician, for backing the poll, and has declared plans to take over security at the province from Kurdish forces along with other disputed areas.

Kirkuk, with a mixed Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen population, is a major source of Iraqi oil exports, and both governments have disputed over the fair mechanism for distributing revenues from those exports.