Hunt for Iraq's Arbil bombers on, death toll tops 100

The US-led coalition was left reeling Wednesday from double suicide bombings in northern Iraq, the deadliest post-war attacks in the country, as US FBI agents probed what officials said could be work of al-Qaeda-linked extremists.

The death toll from the bombings rose to at least 100 late Tuesday, as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were drafted in to investigate what US officials suspected had been perpetrated by foreign militant terror groups.

US officials said at least 247 people were wounded when bombers detonated vests packed with explosives Sunday in Kurdish political party offices during celebrations to mark a major Muslim holiday.

The local interior ministry revised its official toll up to at least 100 dead, according to a television station owned by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the targeted parties.

If confirmed, the figure would well exceed the 83 people, including leading Shiite politician Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, killed in a car bombing in the southern holy city of Najaf last August.

The Kurdish provinces were deep in mourning Wednesday, one day after thousands of people joined funeral corteges for leading officials of the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who died in the attack.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief of the US-led coalition in Iraq, said Tuesday FBI forensic teams had begun sifting through the debris, adding that foreign fighters were probably to blame.

Leaders of the two Kurdish political groups targeted by the blasts in Arbil, 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Baghdad, have also said the attacks could be the work of the extremist Ansar al-Islam.

The radical group, which controlled an enclave of northeast Iraq before being crushed by US forces at the end of March, is suspected of links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

Meanwhile, the bloody anti-US insurgency continued Tuesday as one American soldier was killed and another injured by a homemade bomb near Hazwa, south of Baghdad as they were combing the area for explosives.

The latest death brings to 252 the number of US soldiers killed in the 10-month insurgency battering Iraq since US President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1.

MOURNERS FILL STREETS

Thousands of mourners gathered Tuesday in the Kurdish city of Arbil to pay last respects to the victims of twin suicide bombings, as the death toll climbed to 100, making the attacks the deadliest yet in post-war Iraq.

Grief and fear were evident across the city, as the funeral corteges for senior political leaders moved silently past shuttered shops and deserted side streets.

Officials from the local interior ministry, quoted by a television station run by the KDP, said late Tuesday the death toll had climbed to 100, while US officials said 247 people were injured.

Security has since been stepped up in Arbil, 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Baghdad, with new checkpoints established across the usually untroubled citadel city.

Some 4,000 people gathered for the funerals of Mahdi Koshnaw, a deputy KDP provincial governor who died in the attack, and Shokran Abbas, a PUK party member, among the last officials to be buried.

Processions began outside the bombed party headquarters, with mourners dressed in black or wearing black armbands. Cars were draped with black cloth.

At the city's cemetery, Abbas' weeping son and daughter -- embraced by former PUK prime minister Kawthar Ali Rassoul -- stood by their father's grave as the casket draped in the PUK flag was lowered.

"These attacks will never stop us from keeping our Kurdistan and we will keep our rights alongside our Arab brothers to build a new Iraq," a cleric overseeing the burial told mourners.

Once pitted against each other in a bloody power struggle, the PUK and KDP, who jointly control three northern Iraqi provinces, have vowed to work together to pursue their vision for virtual autonomy under a new federal Iraq.

A Kurdish television station on Tuesday broadcast the picture of a man it said could be one of the suicide bombers who blew themselves up in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq, killing at least 100 people.

The channel run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of two Kurdish political parties targetted in Sunday's attacks, said the picture was taken by a photographer at the KDP offices to cover celebrations of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The image showed a mustachioed man, who appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s. The broadcast urged viewers to provide any information about the suspect to the KDP-controlled interior ministry in Arbil.