Restaurant bomber kills 45 in Iraq

At least 45 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant in Iraq where Kurdish officials were meeting Arab tribal leaders today.

Around 100 others were wounded in the blast in the Abdullah Restaurant just north of the contested oil city of Kirkuk.

Arab tribal leaders were having lunch with members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of President Jalal Talabani. They were to have been driven to a meeting with him after the lunch.

The restaurant was also packed with families celebrating the final day of the Eid religious holiday.

At the city’s main hospital, families wept and screamed in the blood-smeared corridors as doctors sought to save the lives of victims.

Kirkuk, the centre of Iraq’s northern oil fields, has been the scene of long-standing ethnic tension.

The Kurds want to annex Kirkuk and surrounding Tamim province into their self-ruled region in northern Iraq. Most Turkomen and Arabs want the province to remain under central government control, fearing the Kurds would discriminate against them.

Last July, a suicide bomber killed 25 people at a Kurdish political rally in Kirkuk.

Meanwhile American troops launched raids in at least four Iraqi cities, today detaining six people believed to be associated with al-Qaida.