By Mustafa Mahmoud KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Mourners poured into mosques in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, vowing not to let the worst bomb attack in months turn ethnic tensions into bloodshed. Fifty people were killed and some 100 wounded in the suicide bombing on Thursday of a restaurant north of the city that is disputed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. It has been an oasis of relative calm during Iraq's wave of sectarian violence. "What is their sin?" said Miaad Ridha Mohammed, 45, a Kurd, breaking into tears before the funeral in a Sunni mosque for his brother, his brother's wife and two of their three children, all killed in Thursday's blast near Kirkuk. Only his brother's two-year-old daughter Mina survived the bomb in a popular eatery north of Kirkuk, the bloodiest attack in Iraq since a Baghdad truck bomb killed 63 people in June. The explosion reminded Iraqis of the fragility of a recent, decline in the sectarian slaughter prompted by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The security gains will be tested when Iraq holds provincial elections in January and a general election later next year, and when U.S. troops start to pull out of cities in the first half of 2009, ahead of a full withdrawal by the end of 2011. While the wholesale sectarian killings of two years ago have faded, suicide and car bomb attacks are common. Suicide bombings are a trademark of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, but no group claimed responsibility for the attack on the restaurant, where Kurd and Arab officials were dining after holding talks to discuss tensions between their communities. The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk has been generally one of the less violent places in Iraq. DISPUTES But it is disputed by ethnic Kurds, who claim it as their ancient capital and want it to become part of semi-autonomous Kurdistan, and Arabs and Turkmen, who want the city to remain under central government authority. Under the city lie rich, largely untapped, reserves of oil. "This attack is an attempt by the terrorists to derail the peace in this united city," said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, vowing to give the city authorities all the help they needed to cope with the incident. Residents of Kirkuk said they would not allow the bombing to tip the city into the inter-community violence that swept through the rest of Iraq for years after the U.S. invasion. "It is terror in general that doesn't differentiate between kids, and young men and old men," said Mohammed, an employee of the state-run North Oil Company. "This explosion has nothing to do with Arabs, Kurds or Turkmen. It targets innocent civilians. They want to kill Iraqis' joy." Mohammed said the shock of losing almost his entire family in the bomb blast was so great that he lost consciousness when he arrived at a local hospital and was told the news. His brother had taken his family out to lunch after going to a fairground during the Muslim Eid al-Adha religious holiday. Imad Ahmed, 30, an editor at a TV station in Kirkuk, said that one colleague, presenter Kanaan Guzal, a Turkmen, had been killed in the blast along with his three children and brother. "I can't describe that moment when I found out that all five members of one family were killed," he said. "I just want to ask those who did this: 'What victory do you gain by killing children, women, young men and old men?'." (Writing by Khalid al-Ansary; Editing by Michael Christie and Elizabeth Piper)
Women buy fish at a market in Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad November 26, 2008. For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqis ...
