Agence France Presse

BAGHDAD, 5 February 2004 — At least 101 people were killed in the twin suicide bombings at the weekend in the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq, a US military spokesman said here yesterday.

The spokesman added that 133 of the injured remained in hospital three days after the carnage.

A toll given on Tuesday by the television station run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) -- one of two Kurdish political parties targeted in Sunday’s blasts -- put the death toll at 100.

The latest death toll made the irbil bombing the deadliest post-war attacks in Iraq. They well exceeded the 83 people, including leading Shiite politician Ayatollah Mohammad

Baqer al-Hakim, killed in a car bombing in the southern holy city of Najaf last August.

On Sunday, two suicide bombers strapped with explosives blew themselves up at the offices of the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) as hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Eid.

US FBI agents were yesterday probing what officials said could be the work of Al-Qaeda-linked extremists.

The Kurdish provinces were deep in mourning yesterday, one day after thousands of people joined funeral corteges for leading officials of the KDP and PUK who died in the attack. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations chief of the US-led coalition in Iraq, said that FBI forensic teams had begun sifting through the debris, adding that foreign fighters were probably to blame.

Meanwhile, US Army Col. William Mayville apologized yesterday for the killing of an Iraqi child by mortar rounds fired by his forces as the boy’s family picnicked in the northern oil region of Kirkuk.

Mayville told a meeting with local government officials that he has ordered an investigation into Tuesday’s bombing that also wounded the boy’s mother and two brothers.

Mayville said troops of his 173rd Airborne Brigade opened fire because they suspected insurgents were in the area. He said the soldiers found responsible for the deadly error would be held accountable.