Saturday, June 20, 2009 KIRKUK: A truck bomb killed 22 people and wounded dozens more in a town south of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday, the head of the morgue at Kirkuk hospital said.The source said that 80 people had also been wounded by the explosion near the city of Kirkuk, and that the blast had flattened about 20 homes in the area. Violence has dropped sharply across Iraq in the past year. But insurgents including al Qaeda still launch deadly attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi police and civilians in abid to trigger renewed sectarian bloodshed and undermine Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki government.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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