Death toll hits 101 in suicide attacks on Kurds
ERBIL, Iraq -- The death toll from weekend suicide attacks on Kurdish offices in northern Iraq rose to 101 yesterday, and the UN secretary general said he would send a team to the country to try to solve problems over the handover of power.
About 30 miles south of Baghdad the occupation forces suffered new losses when a roadside bomb killed one US soldier and wounded a second, bringing to 367 the number of US soldiers killed in combat since the start of the war.
Some 90 Japanese soldiers left the northern island Hokkaido for southeast Iraq, part of a force of about 1,000 being sent to help rebuild the country, the first deployment of Japanese troops to a war zone since World War II.
The rising death toll from Sunday's suicide attacks on the offices of the main Kurdish parties in the northern town of Erbil was expected to further complicate the process of ending the occupation of Iraq and choosing a provisional government.
Both the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan lost several senior politicians, and analysts said they expected Kurds to press harder for autonomy for the parts of northern Iraq they control.
A spokesman for the US-led authority in Iraq said the number killed in Erbil had risen to 101 from a previously estimated 67, while the number of wounded was 133, fewer than previous accounts of more than 200.
Kurdish television showed pictures of a man it said was responsible for the bombing at the Kurdistan Democratic Party offices and offered a reward for anyone able to identify him.
No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, the bloodiest in Iraq in six months. But Kurdish officials blamed Muslim extremists -- particularly Ansar al-Islam, an armed group that operates in the Kurdish enclave and is believed to be allied with Al Qaeda.
In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the US investigation had not determined who was behind the Sunday attacks.
But Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan-dominated sector of the Kurdish region, said by telephone from Washington: "All indications point to the involvement of Islamic terrorists with Al Qaeda connections,"
Ansar al-Islam, or "Helpers of Islam," is a group of several hundred Kurdish militants who have vowed to establish an independent Islamic state in the north. It was formed in 2000 and began stepping up its activities in October 2001. 