Car bomb blast kills 9 in Iraq’s Mosul

MOSUL — A car bomb exploded inside a residential complex for displaced people in the Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least nine people and wounding five, hospital and police sources said.

The bombing was the latest in a series of attacks since a political crisis erupted a month ago threatening the survival of Iraq’s fragile power-sharing government following the withdrawal of US troops.

A reporter at the scene of the blast in a small village of people from the Shabak minority said the explosion left a shallow cratre four metres across and flesh scattered nearby.

A taxi shattered by shrapnel lay 30 metres from the explosion with pools of blood beneath it.

“All this because of the political conflict over government posts and we are the poorest people paying the price,” Abu Ebrahem, a village resident, said. “They want to agitate sectarian unrest, but they won’t succeed.”

Police said they found another car bomb at the scene and closed the area for several hours to defuse it.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty toll.

Political tensions in Iraq have been high since December, when Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki’s government ordered the arrest of the vice-president, touching off a crisis that many fear will bring a relapse into sectarian conflict.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber disguised as a policeman killed at least 53 people and wounded scores in an attack on pilgrims at a checkpoint in the southern city of Basra.

Mosul, in northern Iraq, was once an Al Qaeda stronghold, and witnessed some of the fiercest fighting during the war that followed the 2003 Us-led invasion.

The eastern outskirts of Mosul form part of the disputed areas between the central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region Government in the north.

The disputed territories between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds are seen as a flashpoint for possible conflict after the last American troops left Iraq in December, nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. — Reuters