| GEO World | | Suicide attack in Iraq restaurant kills 60 | Updated at: 2355 PST, Thursday, December 11, 2008
 KIRKUK: Sixty people were killed and 75 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack in a restaurant near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on the final day of Eid-ul-Azha.
Families lunching at the "Abdullah" restaurant were among the victims of the deadliest attack in Iraq for nearly six months.
Local tribal leaders and representatives of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, who is Kurdish, were meeting at the restaurant, but they escaped injury as they were in a different room, though four bodyguards were hurt, Sheikh Ali Hussein al-Juburi told a foreign news agency.
The blast hit the roadside restaurant 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of Kirkuk and 255 kilometres (160 miles) from Baghdad, police officer Salam Zengana said.
The Abdullah, which was bustling at the time of the blast, is well known for welcoming people from all local communities -- Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Turkmen, although the area is controlled by Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
Waiter Abbas Fadhel said a suicide bomber activated an explosives belt in the middle of the restaurant. |  |
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