Kirkuk blast kills 6, wounds 4

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Six policemen on Tuesday were killed and four civilians were wounded as a result of the car bomb blast that occurred earlier today in downtown Kirkuk city, according to an army official. “Today, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb targeting an emergency police patrol vehicle near the engineering faculty in downtown Kirkuk city, killing six patrolmen and wounding four others, according to an initial count,” the commander of the second regiment in Kirkuk province, Maj. Najm Faroun al-Obeidi, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The explosion caused damage to nearby houses and stores,” Obeidi noted. Earlier today, a police source said that a booby-trapped car went off near the engineering faculty in al-Ghirnata neighborhood, central Kirkuk, leaving an unknown number of casualties. Kirkuk, an oil-rich and mixed city of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians and Arabs, lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. SS (P) 1