A KURDISH village in northern Iraq was devastated yesterday by a massive truck bomb that killed 20 people and wounded 35.
Local police fired on a second truck, killing the driver before he could detonate his explosives.
Wardek, a mudbrick village of 250 houses 55km southeast of Nineveh’s provincial capital of Mosul, was the latest target in a tit-for-tat battle for territory between Kurds and Arabs. The Kurds seek to annex their autonomous region portions of Nineveh and Dyala governorates, as well as the whole of oil-rich Tamim province.
But Arab Iraqis and the Turkoman minority oppose the expansion of the Kurdish region, and some have taken up arms against the Kurds who retaliate against Arab and Turkomen villages.
This struggle is seen by Baghdad and Washington as a greater threat to Iraq’s stability than Sunni-Shia antagonism.
The Wardek blast was the latest in a series of attacks across Iraq.
Four other people were killed and 29 wounded yesterday south of Baghdad. Four US troops and 10 Iraqi police had died on Tuesday.
On Monday, 22 people were killed at Ramadi, west of the capital – the worst daily tally since the beginning of the month of Ramadan three weeks ago. The casualty figure for last month, 456, was the highest since July 2008.
The toll is in part explained by bombings that killed 100 and wounded 600 at the finance and foreign ministries in Baghdad.
These attacks prompted Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to accuse Syria of harbouring former Iraqi Baathists blamed for the bombings.
Baghdad demanded that Damascus extradite 179 Iraqis but Syria refused, demanding proof of their involvement before considering any transfer.
The dispute deepened during a closed meeting of the Iraqi and Syrian foreign ministers at Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday. Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari reportedly charged Syria with “fuelling sectarian issues” in Iraq and “supporting terrorism and violence that threaten Iraqi unity”.
Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem said Iraq “receives foreign instructions to involve Syria, while Syria has nothing to do with it”.
Mr Muallem said Iraq wanted to cover up its security failures by blaming others.
Addressing Arab foreign ministers, he condemned attacks in Iraq, called Baghdad’s accusations “regrettable” and asked for “convincing evidence” of complicity of Iraqis based in Syria.
