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9 refugees killed in car bombing in Iraq's Kirkuk

07 August 2014 19:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. At least nine refugees were killed and some 53 others wounded in a car bomb explosion in Iraq' s northern city of Kirkuk, a local police source said, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

A booby-trapped minibus went off around noon near a Shiite mosque in downtown Kirkuk, some 250 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The huge blast struck dozens of refugees seeking refugee in the Shiite mosque. They fled their homes in the city of Tal Afar in northern Iraq in the wake of advances by extremist Sunni insurgents, the source said.

Three children were among the dead and many of the wounded were women, the source added.

The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq on June 10 when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of Sunni militants who took control of the country's northern city of Mosul and later seized swathes of territories after the Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.