Baghdad - Militants reportedly blew up a bridge
linking the northern city of Kirkuk to Tikrit, police sources told
Voices of Iraq news agency Wednesday.
No casualties were reported so far. The militants are said to
have planted explosives 'under the bridge pillars' bringing it down
as the explosives were detonated.
Kirkuk lies 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, and is the site of
recurrent violence. Traffic between Kirkuk and Baghdad was halted as
a result of the blast.
Bridge explosions have become common in Iraq since April after a
truck bomb damaged the key Serafiya bridge and three days later a
suicide car bomber blew himself up on the busy Jadariya
bridge which runs over Baghdad's Tigris River.
At the time, analysts had said that the attackers were trying to
paralyze Baghdad and its surrounding areas by targeting the bridges
and disconnecting the city centre from surrounding neighbourhoods.
The attacks on bridges continued however. On May 12, a double
explosion, reported near two bridges in southern Baghdad, killed at
least 22 people, including eight policemen.
In late May, a bridge in western Baghdad linking the Adl and
Khadra districts was destroyed by explosives. Four days later
militants had booby-trapped a bridge linking the Amiriya and
Khalidiya districts, 30 kilometres south-west of Fallujah, causing an
explosion that damaged the bridge seriously.
In another incident Wednesday, the independent news agency
reported that three people were killed and five were wounded when a
suicide bomber blew himself up near a police station in Mandly,
southern Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad.
In the northern Diyala province, Iraqi police forces told the
agency that they shot dead a suicide bomber in the morning. The
militant was caught in a car laden with explosives, which he was
reportedly preparing to blow it up.
Separately, local authorities also said that an armed group broke
into a university in Diyala, and stole 22 vehicles. The militants
fled without any confrontation with the university's
security.
In another development, unidentified assailants abducted Falih
Wadawi, managing editor of the official Iraqi al-Sabah newspaper in
eastern Baghdad, a source at the Iraqi press syndicate said.
Wadawi, who used to work for the Baath Party al-Thawra newspaper,
is one of the most prominent journalists in Iraq.
It was the latest attack on the media in the past few weeks. On
June 7, independent Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency correspondent
Sahar Hussein al-Haydari was shot dead by militants in the Hadbaa
neighbourhood of Mosul.
The previous week, VOI lost another of its correspondents, Nezar
al- Radi, who was killed by gunmen during his participation in a
workshop for journalists in Missan.
Also, three Iraqi reporters and an Associated Press (AP) cameraman
were killed by armed groups during the same week.
Several Iraqi news sources reported Wednesday that Foreign
Minister Hoshyar Zibary met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in
New York to discuss the need to activate the UN's role in Iraq.
'Zibary highlighted the importance of UN support for the Iraqi
government to realize peace and stability in the country,' read a
statement published by VOI.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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