2 bodies found in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Two bodies of a young man and a woman were found by police forces in southwest of Kirkuk, a police source said on Wednesday. “The bodies were found on late Tuesday in Mezher al-Aasi village in Riyadh district, southwest of Kirkuk,” the source told IraqiNews.com. “The corpses bore signs of gunshot wounds and were sent to the morgue,” he added, noting that an investigation was opened into it. 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. SH (P) 1