Suicide bomber kills 30 mourners in Mosul mosque bombing

A SUICIDE bomber blew himself up at a Shi-ite mosque during a funeral in Mosul yesterday, killing at least 30 people.

The attack came as Iraq’s main Shi’ite party and a Kurdish bloc said they reached a deal that sets the stage for a new government to be formed.

US troops cordoned off the north-eastern Tameem neighbourhood near the mosque, a poor area of the city crowded with many homes. Civilian vehicles helped ambulance crews in ferrying casualties to hospitals.

“As we were inside the mosque, we saw a ball of fire and heard a huge explosion,” said Tahir Abdullah Sultan, 45. “After that blood and pieces of flesh were scattered around” he added.

Insurgents in the past have targeted Shi’ite mosques and funerals. Mosul has been a hotbed of insurgent activity and the scene of many bombings, drive-by shootings and assassinations against the country’s security services, Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and people thought to be working with US-led forces.

The deal between the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance and a Kurdish coalition will allow a new government to be named when the National Assembly opens next week.

It calls for the government to begin discussion on the return of about 100,000 Kurds to the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk and talks about redrawing existing Kurdish regions to include the city in Iraq’s new constitution.

It also gives the Kurds just one major cabinet post - one fewer than they demanded - in return for making one of their leaders, Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s first-ever Kurdish president. One ministry will go to the country’s Sunni Arab minority, which largely stayed away from the January 30 elections.

The Kurds agreed to back conservative Islamic Dawa Party leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari for prime minister. As part of the deal, any land agreement will be incorporated into the country’s new constitution, which must be drafted by mid-August and approved by referendum two months’ later.

“As for Kirkuk, we agreed to solve the issue in two steps. In the first step, the new government is committed to normalising the situation in Kirkuk, the other step regarding annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan is to be left until the writing of the constitution,” said Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish coalition, who served as head of the Iraq’s former National Council.

He added the new government “is obligated to normalisation in Kirkuk, the return of deported Kurds to their main areas in Kirkuk.”

Kurdish demands include an autonomous Kurdistan as part of federal Iraq and a share of the region’s oil revenues. They also want to maintain their peshmerga militia and want a bigger share of the national budget, more than the 17% they now receive.

They also want reversal of what they call the ‘Arabisation’ of areas such as Kirkuk. Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein relocated Iraqi Arabs to the region in a bid to secure the oil fields there.