2 cops wounded by bomb blast in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Two policemen were wounded on Wednesday in a bomb explosion in central Kirkuk, a police source said. “An explosive charge exploded inside a car in al-Tarbiya street in central Kirkuk, injuring two policemen,” the source told IraqiNews.com. “The wounded were rushed to the Kirkuk hospital for treatment,” he added. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (P) 1