10 dead, 18 wounded in Iraq explosion

By DPA

Baghdad : Ten people died in an explosion after a fuel tanker crashed into the Tikrit police command Sunday destroying its two-storey building, a police source in Tikrit said.


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The killed include five police officers. At least 18 policemen were wounded.

Tikrit, 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of the executed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a stronghold of the dictator's Baath party.

A verdict was expected Sunday in the Anfal case trial of six top defendants including Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as chemical Ali for the chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds.

An estimated 180,000 Kurds were killed in Saddam's campaign codenamed Operation Anfal (Spoils of War), when the Iraqi army allegedly carried out a scorched-earth campaign against hundreds of villages in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in 1987-1988.

Saddam Hussein was tried for genocide against the Kurds as part of the Anfal trial. He was found guilty and hanged last December 30 for the massacre of Shias in Dujail in 1982.

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