Iraqi Police Apprehend Would-Be Suicide Bomber

Iraqi police say they apprehended a would-be suicide bomber in the northern city of Kirkuk before he was able to detonate his explosives belt.

Iraqi television footage showed two police officers holding a young boy while two men are seen cutting off a belt of explosives. After they take away the belt, the boy is seen being hurried into a police car and driven away.

The boy was apprehended late on August 21 shortly after a suicide bomb attack on a Shi’ite mosque in the city.

“The boy claimed during interrogation that he had been kidnapped by masked men who put the explosives on him and sent him to the area,” Kirkuk intelligence official Chato Fadhil Humadi told AP.

Humadi added that the boy was displaced from the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, by military operations in the area.

The boy’s name has not been disclosed.

Kirkuk is an oil-rich city in Iraq’s north that is home to Arabs, Kurds, and Turkoman, who all have competing claims to the area.

Source: rferl.org