Gunmen kill woman south of Kirkuk

KIRKUK , Sept. 19 (Iraqi News) – Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a woman near her house in Touz Khormato district, south of Kirkuk , a police source said on Friday. “A woman was killed by the gunmen today near her house in al-Askari neighborhood in central Touz Khormato, south of Kirkuk,” the source told IraqiNews.com – Voices of Iraq (Iraqi News) on condition of anonymity. “The gunmen fled to unknown place and the body was sent to the forensic medicine department,” he added. Kirkuk , 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad , sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (P) 1