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.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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