2 wounded in clashes near Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: A guard on a mosque al-Touz district, south of Kirkuk, thwarted an attempt by an armed group to emplace an improvised explosive device, resulting in the injury of a gunman and his arrest and one of the mosque guards, a security source said on Saturday. “An armed group tried to plant an IED near al-Wahhab mosque in central Touz district, (80 km) south of Kirkuk, where clashes erupted between the mosque guards and the gunmen,” the source told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The clashes left a gunman wounded in his head and one of the mosque guards,” he said. He added that the rest of the “terrorist” group escaped. “The police intensified efforts in search of the gunmen and rushed the wounded to a nearby hospital for treatment,” the source said, not giving more information. The oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen population, lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (P) 2