ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A car bomb exploded yesterday outside an
office used by U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, private CNN-Turk
television reported. Several people were wounded, but it was
unclear if Americans were among them.
The wounded included Iraqi Kurdish guards and children from
nearby houses. Firefighters were at the scene of the blast in
Irbil, the largest city in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
U.S. military officials said they could not immediately confirm
the report on CNN-Turk, a local subsidiary of U.S.-based CNN.
U.S. soldiers flew to the site by helicopter and cordoned off
the area together with local Iraqi Kurdish fighters.
A Turkish reporter at the scene said by telephone that the blast
collapsed the front of the two-story building. He said that most of
the injured were from nearby houses. Witnesses said two people were
killed and ten injured, but hospital officials could not confirm
those reports, the Turkish reporter said.
Footage showed Kurdish women wailing and men running in panic
with a burning car behind them. A Kurdish man could be seen
carrying a toddler with a bleeding head in his arms.
The footage also showed the four-wheel-drive vehicle that
apparently carried the bomb was intact but badly burned. Its
chassis was in one piece.
Authorities in Irbil, about 200 miles north of Baghdad, called
to residents over loudspeakers to donate blood for the wounded,
CNN-Turk said. Northern Iraq has been the most stable part of the
country since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.