Four arrested over mosque bombings
Iraqi police have arrested four people in connection with the suicide bombing of two mosques near the Iranian border which killed at least 76 people, one of them a possible third suicide bomber, police said today.
Two suicide bombers wandered into the Sheik Murad mosque and the Grand Mosque in the border town of Khanaqin during Friday noon prayers and detonated explosives strapped to their bodies.
Reported death tolls today ranged from 76, provided by Kurdish officials, to at least 100, provided by police. Hospital officials said 74 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the largely Kurdish town, about 90 miles north east of Baghdad.
It was the deadliest attack since September 29, when three suicide car bombers struck in the mostly Shiite town of Balad just north of Baghdad, killing at least 99 people.
A security officer in Khanaqin said four people were arrested following the blasts. Three came from outside the town and the fourth was a third suicide bomber who was found near the scene.
Khanaqin police had received information from the authorities in nearby Baqouba about a possible suicide bomber in the town, but it came just minutes before the attacks, he added.
The attack came just hours after two car bombs exploded outside the Hamra hotel yesterday, in the second attack against a compound housing foreign journalists in the Iraqi capital in less than a month.
