Iraq

Vehicle bomb causes dozens of casualties

A vehicle bomb detonated today outside an Iraqi police station in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing and wounding dozens of people, police said.

The morning blast heavily damaged the Rahimawa police station in the city and destroyed nearby cars.

Kirkuk’s police chief, Torhan Abdul Rahman Yousef, said dozens of people were killed and wounded. He did not immediately have precise figures. Ambulances rushed to the scene, and police cordoned off the area, refusing to talk to reporters.

Iran

Nation confirms buying nuclear equipment

Iran publicly acknowledged for the first time Sunday that it once bought nuclear equipment from middlemen on the Asian subcontinent, lending credence to a recent report that detailed black-market nuclear deals between a Pakistani scientist and Iran and Libya.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi did not go into details, but repeated Tehran’s claims that its efforts to acquire nuclear technology were strictly energy-related and it never intended for weapons development.

“We purchased some (nuclear) parts from some dealers, but we don’t know what was the source or which country they came from,” Asefi told reporters. “It happened that some of the dealers were from some subcontinent countries.”

Iran

New parliament has fewer women, more nuclear experts

The profile of Iran’s new parliament took shape Sunday, with an outcome that the opposition had said was all but preordained: a hard-line core, even in the liberal bastion of Tehran.

There were fewer women and apparent gains for lawmakers holding atomic science backgrounds. One conservative leader said the new parliament may try to play a more prominent role in foreign policy and the nuclear sphere as the Islamic state confronts suspicions that it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The results from the Friday election had been widely expected after hard-liners barred more than 2,400 candidates, many of them reformers, from participating.