KIRKUK, Iraq, 18 September 2006 — Iraq’s fragile northern oil city of Kirkuk yesterday buckled under a wave of bombings targeting the security forces that killed at least 27 people. Rebels unleashed a wave of deadly bomb attacks in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, including a huge suicide truck bomb, a day after Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki urged Iraqis to embrace reconciliation.

At least 27 people were killed and 73 wounded in coordinated blasts caused by a truck bomb and four car bombs that rocked oil-rich Kirkuk, a flash point city north of Baghdad disputed by Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen.

In the deadliest explosion, a suicide attacker driving a truck rigged with explosives blew himself up outside a police center and the offices of two top Kurdish parties, killing 17 people, mostly civilians, police said.

The toll included 10 women and two children visiting relatives held by police. Within an hour, a car bomb targeting a US military patrol killed three civilians and wounded six. Minutes later, a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle against an Iraqi army checkpoint, wounding two soldiers. Two other car bombs struck the city.

A car bomb exploded in front of the Mahaba wa Tasamah (Love and Forgiveness) foundation killing one woman and wounding four others.

The organization had closed its doors a week earlier after threats from the Al-Qaeda linked Ansar Al-Sunna group. The building was owned by a local tribal sheikh who had recently called for Saddam Hussein’s release and reinstatement.

The closed-off area also houses headquarters of the two main Kurdish political parties, those of Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani. But police said the blast was aimed at the police.

Firefighters battled flames at collapsed buildings and charred corpses lay in streets littered with twisted car parts. Witnesses said the bomber fired a pistol from the truck at the Kurdish guards before he blew himself up.

Kirkuk police chief Maj. Gen. Sherko Shakir said the simultaneous explosions were aimed to “destabilize the city.” Settling Kirkuk’s status between ethnic groups is one of Iraq’s most sensitive issues, and failure to contain violence there could spark all-out war across Iraq, already gripped by sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis.

In Baghdad, police found 24 more victims of sectarian death squads in the past 24 hours, all of them bound, bearing signs of torture and with a single gunshot to the head, bringing to more than 200 the number of bodies in five days. A roadside bomb in a popular bird and animal market in Baghdad killed two people and wounded eight, police said.

Shifting the focus to Baghdad, key to securing the rest of Iraq, US commanders are diverting troops from western Anbar province to bolster a monthlong crackdown in the capital.