Iraq militants blow up bridge between Kirkuk and Tikrit (Roundup)

Jun 13, 2007, 13:35 GMT

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.