02 February 2004	Monday	10 Zilhaj 1424

ARBIL, Feb 1: Two suicide bombers strapped with explosives blew themselves up in near-simultaneous attacks on two Kurdish parties in Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 56 people and wounding many more, medics and officials said.

Medical officers at one of the hospitals that received victims of the blasts in the northern city of Arbil said they had the bodies of at least 56 people killed by the bombers.

A party official said earlier that up to 200 people had been killed or hurt in the attacks on the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the main factions in Iraq's Kurdish north.

The bombers struck at about 10:30am (0730 GMT) as party officials received visitors at their respective headquarters for Eidul Azha celebration. PUK official Qubad Talabani said some people were caught in debris.

"What seems to have happened is some of the walls seem to have collapsed in a building so that many people seem to be trapped under rubble," he told CNN. "But we are unfortunately hearing around 56 people at least killed in this tragic, tragic act of terrorism."

Lying on bloodstained sheets in a hospital bed, PUK member Idris Ahmed said the Eid celebration had been intended to unite Iraqis.

"We received well-wishers for the Eidul Azha holiday in our building, whether Arab, Kurd or Turkmen," he told Reuters, his face badly burned from the blast. "We will fight terrorism and the terrorists who carried out this explosion."

Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat with long experience with the Kurds of northern Iraq, said people at the scene were in shock.

"The significance of this is devastating to the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of the US's biggest allies in the war," he told Reuters by telephone from Arbil. -Reuters