Kurdish MP accuses al-Qaeda of masterminding Kirkuk blast

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A lawmaker from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) accused al-Qaeda network of being behind the suicide blast inside a restaurant on Thursday, adding the explosion was yet another attempt to “drive a wedge” among the different groups of Arabs and Kurds in the city. “All indications hold that al-Qaeda was behind yesterday’s terrorist attack that only aimed to shake security and kill as many Iraqis as possible,” Mahmoud Othman told IraqiNews.com. “The feast prepared at the targeted restaurants was for Arab and Kurdish tribal leaders with the aim of stretching bridges of confidence and mutual understanding, but the incident that occurred prevented that,” said Othman, whose KA is the second largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament with 53 out of 275 seats. Kirkuk, 250 km northeast of Baghdad, had witnessed on Thursday a suicide blast in a restaurant in the city, leaving 45 people killed and 105 others wounded in a recent count of casualties reported by medics. “The local government in Kirkuk has set up a high-level fact-finding commission to investigate the incident and we are now waiting for the results,” Othman added. AmR (S) 1