2 arrested in central Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Two suspected of having kidnapped a girl a few days ago from Touz district, Salah al-Din province, were arrested on Saturday, a senior police official in Kirkuk said. “A police force captured two men in central Kirkuk for suspected involvement in kidnapping a young girl in Touz district,” Col. Ahmed Shamiran told IraqiNews.com. He did not provide further details. Touz lies 80 km south of Kirkuk and 100 km km east of Tikrit, the capital city of Salah al-Din province. 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.   AmR (P)/SR 1