KIRKUK, Iraq, 17 July 2006 — A suicide bomber walked into a coffee shop, asked for a glass of water, and then blew himself up, killing 23 people in a northern Iraqi town, on a day 22 people died elsewhere in the country. Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, police chief of Tuz Khurmatu, located 75 kilometers south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, said 25 others were also wounded in the bombing. “The bomber wearing an explosive belt walked into the coffee shop and blew himself up,” Amin told AFP.

He said the bomber reportedly asked for a glass of water before detonating himself, bringing down the old building with the force of the explosion. Rescuers were searching through the rubble for survivors and the death toll could climb, he added. Amin said the coffee shop was close to a Shiite mosque in the eastern part of the town in an area populated by Turkmen Shiites.

Elsewhere in Iraq, at least 22 Iraqis, as well as a British soldier who was killed during a raid near Iraq’s main southern city of Basra. The soldier died when British troops raided the tribal area of Garmat Ali, north of Basra to “apprehend individuals involved in terrorist activities in Basra,” British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge said. He said another soldier was wounded in an exchange of fire during the raid which resulted in the detention of two “suspected terrorists.” The soldier’s death brought to 114 the British military’s losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

In another incident, two more British soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb on the road to Al-Zubair, southwest of Basra, exploded next to their vehicle. The incidents are part of a pattern of increased instability in the south which had once been considered relatively calm compared with restive Sunni central and western Iraq.

British Maj. Gen. John Cooper, head of coalition troops in southern Iraq, told AFP on Thursday that the coalition forces had to work “more on Basra,” especially on the city’s police.

Last month, British Defense Secretary Des Browne called for a security crackdown in Basra on the lines of one currently being implemented in the capital. But the Baghdad operation has so far failed to stem raging violence.