POLICE STRIP EXPLOSIVES OFF WOULD-BE CHILD BOMBER
IRBIL A day after a child suicide bomber killed 54 people at a wedding party in Turkey, a boy would-be suicide bomber was apprehended in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk before he was able to detonate his explosives belt.
Local television footage aired on Kurdistan 24 TV shows a group of police officers holding the young boy while two men are seen cutting off a belt of explosives. After they remove the belt, the boy is seen being rushed into a police truck and driven away.
The boy was apprehended on Sunday night, less than an hour after a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in the city, Kirkuk police department spokesman Col. Avrasiya Kamil Wais said. In the mosque attack, only the bomber died and two people were wounded.
“The boy claimed during interrogation that he had been kidnapped by masked men who put the explosives on him and sent him to the area,” said Kirkuk intelligence official Brig. Chato Fadhil Humadi.
In Turkey, officials said at least 22 victims of the Saturday night attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, were children younger than 14.