Leaders of Iraq's two main Kurdish parties said today that recent suicide attacks would only help forge closer ties between their once-rival groups as the death toll from the yesterday's bombings reached 67.
US military officials said the number killed in yesterday's co-ordinated attacks in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil had risen to 67 - from an earlier estimate of 56 - and that there were 247 wounded.
"This [the attacks] has had a devastating effect on the Kurdish leadership because we have lost so many valuable people," Mr Hoshiyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister and a Kurd, said. "But I also definitely believe that this incident has brought Kurds together and strengthened their unity."
That greater bond could influence US plans for the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government ahead of a July 1st deadline, as tensions between various ethnic and religious groups become increasingly visible.
Doctors in Arbil said many of the wounded were in critical condition and feared the toll could climb further.
The attacks killed several senior members of the main Kurdish parties - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The PUK and the KDP, whose militias fought a civil war in the 1990s, have become more tightly aligned in recent years and are both closely allied to the United States, having staunchly backed the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.