In brief: Iraq party office bombing kills 19

BAGHDAD – A double bombing at a Kurdish party office killed 19 people in a town northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, Iraqi officials said.

Police officials said the attack took place in the morning when a suicide bomber set off his explosive vest at the gate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan office in Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed Diyala province.

Minutes later, a car bomb exploded near the building as security forces arrived to inspect the scene of the first blast. Police put the death toll for both explosions at 19 killed and 65 wounded. The dead included a senior police officer and four of his bodyguards, and several houses and cars were damaged in the attack.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

The PUK is headed by the ailing Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is receiving treatment in a hospital in Germany.

Death toll in Afghan flash flood tops 80

GUZIRGA I-NUR, Afghanistan – More than 80 bodies have been found after a devastating flash flood in Afghanistan’s mountainous and remote north, a provincial official said Sunday, as police and villagers scoured the rugged terrain for missing people.

Lt. Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of Baghlan province, said the death toll from Friday’s flash flooding had climbed to 81 from 54. The flood destroyed some 850 houses across several villages and damaged more than 1,000, leaving thousands of people in need of shelter, food, water and medicine, Rahman said.

Rahman said local authorities had received around 100 tents, several hundred blankets and some food, but that more supplies were needed.