Gas line defect behind Sulaimaniya blast – source

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: The blast that took place in Sulaimaniya was caused by a defect in a gas line, the Kurdish province’s security director said, dismissing any “terrorist or sabotage acts”. Brig. Hassan Nouri had said that the number of people wounded in the blast rose to seven. “The blast left seven wounded, four of them slightly,” Nouri told IraqiNews.com, adding the explosion also caused material damage to four vehicles and six houses nearby. Meanwhile, a source from the Sulaimaniya police said that three students were among the wounded. 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