Huge Blast Kills 15, Wounds 132 in Northern Iraq

Roadside bomb triggers explosion at arms dump in Mosul
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 23, 2008 3:50 PM CST
Huge Blast Kills 15, Wounds 132 in Northern Iraq
Iraqi men stand next to a wounded person at a hospital in the oil rich city of Kirkuk, 23 January 2008. A car bomb in a market place in Al-Dibis town, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) northeast of the oil city of Kirkuk, killed today six people. Meanwhile 12 persons died when a powerful booby-trap flattened...   (Getty Images)

A blast in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul claimed at least 15 lives and left 132 wounded today, Reuters reports. The explosion came after Iraqi troops detonated a roadside bomb near a building used as a munitions dump by militants, a US general said. At least 15 tons of explosives are estimated to have been stored in the building.

Witnesses reported the resulting explosion was one of the biggest ever seen in Mosul, which, along with other areas of Nineveh province, has become a center for Sunni extremist fighters following their expulsion from Baghdad and the western Anbar province. A separate attack near Kirkuk, also in the north, killed 16 today, Reuters adds. (More al-Qaeda in Iraq stories.)

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