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player ready...A car bomb exploded near shops and cafes in the northwestern city of Tal Afar late Saturday morning, killing at least six people and wounding at least 50 others.
Witnesses said the bomb exploded in a marketplace in the Wihda district as people ran to the scene of a car accident in the middle of the street.
“One of the two cars’ owners was my cousin,” said Sadiq Hidayet, 38, who was wounded in the bombing and taken to a hospital. “I went to him, and then a white car came, and the blast happened.” His cousin was killed in the bombing, he said.
In a statement, U.S. military officials said five were killed and 53 were wounded.
Tal Afar, the capital of Nineveh province, is split among Turkmens, Sunni and Shiites and was once a place of almost relentless violence. U.S. military officials in Tal Afar say, however, that bombings and other mayhem have markedly declined.
Khisro Goran, Nineveh’s deputy governor, blamed the attack on Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. “Their only aim is to kill as much as they can of Shiites to inflame a new circle of sectarian violence,” Goran said.
Also on Saturday, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special representative to Iraq, traveled to Najaf to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shiite religious leader.
De Mistura said later that in the meeting the two men discussed the problems that have blocked passage of a provincial election law by Iraq’s parliament.