A spate of bomb attacks against police in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk in Iraq has killed at least 27 people and injured 89 others in the worst violence to hit Iraq in nearly two months.
The attacks in the city come with just months to go before US forces, who participate in confidence-building tripartite patrols and checkpoints with central government forces and Kurdish security officers across north Iraq, must withdraw from the country.
Three explosions - two car bombs and a magnetic ‘sticky bomb’ attached to a car - occurred around one hour apart in the city, security officials said.
The first of the blasts occurred at 9.20am local time when the ‘sticky bomb’ exploded in the parking lot of the city's police headquarters, Major Salam Zangan said.
When police and emergency responders arrived at the scene shortly afterwards, a car bomb detonated.
A senior security official confirmed the toll, adding that all but one of the dead were policemen, while an interior ministry official in Baghdad said 29 people had died and 80 were injured.
The twin blasts caused massive damage to nearby police and civilian vehicles, and several police cars with loudspeakers affixed to them could be heard appealing to Kirkuk residents to make their way to the city's hospital to donate much-needed blood for victims, an AFP journalist said.
Kirkuk lies at the centre of disputed territory that is claimed by both Iraq's central government in Baghdad and Kurdish regional authorities in Arbil.
US officials have persistently said that the unresolved row is one of the biggest threats to Iraq's future stability.
The attacks in Kirkuk come just a day after the Iraqi army announced the arrest of the alleged military leader of al-Qaeda's offshoot in Iraq, along with three of his acolytes in a raid.
Today's death toll was the highest in Iraq since 29 March, when a band of al-Qaeda gunmen and suicide bombers managed to storm a provincial council building in the central city of Tikrit killing 58 people.
Violence is down dramatically in Iraq from its peak, but attacks remain common. A total of 211 Iraqis were killed in violence in April, according to official figures.
