Global General

1 student killed, 65 injured in N Iraq bombings

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-05-02 18:16

MOSUL, Iraq - Twin bomb explosions went off on Sunday near buses carrying Christian university students in the city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, killing a student and wounding up to 65 others, a provincial police source said.

The incident occurred in the morning when a booby-trapped car parked at the Kokejli area in eastern Mosul detonated near the buses that just arrived from the Christian town of Hamdaniyah, some 30 km east of Mosul, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Moments later, a roadside bomb went off at the scene, targeting the students who were travelling from their town to the University of Mosul, the source said.

"Our latest reports said that a Christian student was killed by the double blasts and 65 people were injured, most of them Christian students," the source added.

Earlier police reports said that a car bomb explosion killed a Christian student and injured 50 others in Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad.

Insurgents frequently targeted different ethnic groups in the mixed province of Nineveh, where Christian, Shiite and Kurd communities live along with a Sunni majority.

The attacks apparently were aimed at reigniting ethnic and sectarian conflicts, as insurgents waged attacks during the past years on Christian churches, killing a number of Christians and forcing a large number to leave their ancient home city of Mosul, either to immigrate abroad or to move to safer havens in other Iraqi cities or villages.

Christians in the mainly Muslim Iraq are a minority group, they live in Baghdad and the northern provinces.