Sulaimaniya blast wounded 7

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: The number of people wounded in Monday’s central Sulaimaniya blast rose to seven, according to the province’s security chief. “The blast left seven wounded, four of them slightly,” Brig. Hassan Nouri told IraqiNews.com, adding the explosion also caused material damage to four vehicles and six houses nearby. Nouri said it is not so far known whether the explosion resulted from an act of sabotage or a gas pipe blast. Meanwhile, a source from the Sulaimaniya police said that three students were among the wounded. Earlier, a security source from the province’s Emergency Police Department said that three civilians were wounded in an initial count of casualties from a blast that had ripped through the Kurdish city. “Three civilians were wounded and four vehicles near the explosion scene were set on fire,” the source told IraqiNews.com. “Initial investigations showed that the blast was not resulted from a car bomb,” the source said, not giving more details. Local sources had said the blast took place in the area between the headquarters of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Faculty of Fine Arts. The modern city of Sulaimaniya, 364 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, was founded in 1748 by a Kurdish prince known as Ibrahim Pasha Baban who named it for his father Sulaiman Pasha. Since being founded as the capital of a powerful Kurdish principality it has grown to about 1,800,000 people. Sulaimaniya, known as Zamwa prior to its founding, is the cultural center of the Sorani-speaking Kurds and an important economic centre for Iraqi Kurdistan. AmR (S) 1