Suicide bombers kill 22 in northern Iraq

Mosul (Iraq), Nov 24: Two suicide bombers, one in a car and the other wearing an explosive vest, killed 22 people and wounded 26 in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar today, police in the regional capital Mosul said.

The attack, apparently on civilians at an outdoor market for vehicles, came a day after the deadliest attack in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, when 202 people were killed in a series of explosions in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad.

Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, was for a time a stronghold of Sunni insurgent groups linked to al Qaeda. It has for the past year been held up as an example of successful counter-insurgency operations by the U S military.

It is mostly home to Turkish-speaking ethnic Turkmen who are divided between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim believers. Some Sunnis in Tal Afar have complained that the arrival of Shi'ite- dominated Iraqi security forces under U S supervision has led to them being oppressed and discriminated against.

Reuters