6 people nabbed in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: The internal affairs intelligence in Kirkuk arrested six persons carrying weapons and explosives in northern Kirkuk, a police source said. “The forces arrested six people in a house in al-Iskan neighborhood in northern Kirkuk, where they found two bombs and a pistol with a silencer,” the source told IraqiNews.com. “Investigation still underway,” he noted. 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