Car bomber claims five in northern Iraq
Kurdish officials fear sleeper cell activity
BEIRUT – A suicide car bombing stunned the normally secure northern Iraqi city of Irbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, while Kurdish and Iraqi government forces mounted a new offensive against Islamic State militants.
The explosion, which struck at midday Wednesday, killed five people in addition to the attacker and wounded dozens near the heavily guarded Kurdish government compound in central Irbil, a city that largely has been insulated from the war against extremists raging nearby.
Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command announced that 24 new airstrikes had been conducted against Islamic State positions in Iraq from Monday through Wednesday, including 13 strikes near the Kurdish-held northern oil city of Kirkuk, south of Irbil, and seven near Mosul, an Islamic State stronghold west of Irbil.
The Kurdish news site Rudaw quoted a local lawmaker saying that four senior Islamic State figures, including the militant-appointed chief of Mosul, were killed in the latest U.S. airstrikes on the city, Iraq’s second most populous. There was no independent corroboration of the report.
The U.S.-led coalition also carried out six airstrikes against Islamic State positions in neighboring Syria and one against the so-called “Khorasan Group,” which the Pentagon calls a network of veteran al-Qaida operatives plotting attacks against the West. It was the fourth U.S. air assault since September targeting the Khorasan network, which is linked to the Nusra Front, the official al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.
The Kurdish administration based in Irbil is allied closely with the United States. U.S. military advisers are working with Kurdish peshmerga forces, as well as with the Iraqi military.
Car bomb attacks, while an almost daily occurrence in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, are unusual in Irbil, a prosperous city of more than 1 million that is a regional oil hub and hosts many international companies and is home to a sizable expatriate population.
Kurdish authorities fear that sleeper cells could be plotting attacks in Irbil and other Kurdish cities. The Kurdish region has seen an influx of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons from throughout Iraq. While the great majority are innocent civilians, officials say some of the displaced may be Islamic State sympathizers and infiltrators.
The governor, who was reportedly in his office when the car bomb detonated outside, blamed Islamic State for the attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb, which detonated outside blast walls protecting the governor’s compound in the center of Irbil. Four of the dead were police officers and the other was a civilian, reported Rudaw, which also said 29 were injured in the blast.