Iraqi violence killed at least 40 people on Tuesday as Kurds in the autonomous north swore in former rebel leader Massoud Barzani as their first president. The US military said a rocket-propelled grenade killed one soldier and wounded two more in Baghdad, bringing US military deaths since the 2003 invasion to 1,698, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
In the deadliest attack on Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of civil servants waiting for paycheques at a branch of Al-Rafidain bank in Kirkuk, killing at least 20 people, police said. Another 81 were wounded.
A statement posted on the internet in the name of the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna group said it carried out the attack against the "infidel" police.
It warned potential recruits: "We will follow you everywhere, whether you are wearing military fatigues or civilian clothes."
The bombers struck shortly before Barzani was sworn in as Kurdish president in nearby Arbil and targeted a bitterly contested city that the Kurds want as capital of an expanded autonomous region.
North of Baghdad, another car bomb killed 10 more Iraqis, including two children, and wounded seven, security and hospital sources said.
Troops had been called in to reinforce a police station in the town of Kanaan that was under mortar attack, a police officer said. They were hit by the car bomb parked nearby.
Near Ramadi, US troops killed five Iraqi civilians and wounded four others Tuesday, believing their car to be a bomb, a US military statement said.
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