Syrian army on offensive in Aleppo after university blast

String of attacks across Iraq kill at least 31

Fire fighters look for survivors at the local headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party after a bomb attack in Kirkuk, 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013. Two car bombs exploded in Kirkuk, the deadliest of the two explosions struck the local headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The KDP is led by Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region, who has frequently sparred with Iraq's central governor in Baghdad, killing and wounding scores of people, police said. (AP Photo/ Emad Matti)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of a major Kurdish party in northern Iraq early Wednesday, the deadliest in a wave ofmorning attacks that killed at least 31 people across the country.

The violence comes amid rising tensions among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups that threaten to plunge the country back into chaos nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion. While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, car bombs and coordinated attacks are favorite tactics of Sunni insurgents, such as al-Qaida's Iraq branch. They seek to exacerbate divisions within Iraq in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government.

The car bomb outside the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in downtown Kirkuk caused widespread damage, mangling cars and tearing apart storefronts on a busy commercial street. The KDP is led by Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region, who has frequently sparred with Iraq'scentral government in Baghdad.

Sadeeq Omar Rasoul, the head of Kirkuk health directorate, said 17 people were killed in the blast. Another car bomb that exploded nearby killed another two people. At least 190 were wounded in the two attacks, he said.

Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, who all have competing claims to the oil-rich area. The Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-ruled region in Iraq's north, a proposition strongly opposed by Arabs and Turkomen.

The city is at the heart of a snaking swath of territory disputed between the Kurds, who have their own armed fighting force, and Iraq's central government.

A shootout in Tuz Khormato, another contested town along the disputed area, prompted both sides to rush troops and heavy weapons to the area in November.

On Wednesday, another car bomb struck the local headquarters for Kurdish security forces in Tuz Khormato, killing five and wounding 36, according to Raed Ibrahim, the head of the provincial health directorate. The town is about 210 kilometers (130 miles) north of Baghdad.

The attacks came as hundreds of mourners gathered in the western city of Fallujah to bury a prominent Sunni lawmaker assassinated by a suicide bomber on Tuesday.

The politician, Ifan Saadoun al-Issawi, was part of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which holds some posts in Iraq's loose power-sharing government, but at the same time is the main force in opposition to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration. He was also a founder of the local branch of the Sahwa, a group of Sunni Arabs who joined forces with the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida at the height of Iraq's insurgency.

Fallujah and the nearby city of Ramadi have been the scene of more than three weeks of demonstrations against the government.

A planted bomb went off as mourners gathered to mark al-Issawi's death, wounding three of them, authorities said.

A host of smaller attacks hit other parts of the country as well.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed three policemen as they were sitting in their patrol car, a roadside bomb killed two other officers on a highway in the capital and gunmen shot dead an army officer at a checkpoint, officials said.

One policeman was killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb struck their car in Hawija, 240 kilometers (160 miles) north of Baghdad, according to authorities.

The officials providing details of the attacks outside the disputed areas spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information to reporters.

Violence has fallen since the peak of insurgency several years ago, but lethal attacks still occur frequently.

Wednesday's violence was the deadliest in the country since Nov. 29, when attacks mainly targeting Shiite pilgrims in southern Iraq killed at least 43 people.

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Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed reporting.

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Pakistanis pile bodies outside governor's house in protest

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pashtun Tribesmen from northwest Pakistan dumped 15 bloody bodies in front of government offices on Wednesday, protesting against what they said were extra-judicial killings by security forces in the latest challenge to the government's authority.

The protest in the northwestern city of Peshawar follows a three-day sit-in by members of the Shi'ite community alongside the bodies of 96 people killed in a sectarian bomb attack in the southwestern city of Quetta, and coincides with a protest against corruption in the capital that has attracted thousands of people who have set up tents in front of parliament.

The Supreme Court also ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Tuesday in connection with a corruption investigation, compounding a sense of crisis for the government.

In Peshawar, the protesters said members of the security forces had arrested the victims on Tuesday after the beheading of six paramilitary forces in the area three days ago.

Their bullet-riddled bodies were later dumped in their village in the in Alamgudar area of the Khyber region, the protesters said.

The Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force chiefly responsible for the area, did not give an official comment. Privately, officers denied responsibility.

In an echo of the Quetta demonstration last week, the protesters laid out the bodies on blankets in front of the governor's house in the provincial capital and insisted they would not bury them until their demands were met.

Those include an impartial inquiry and punishment for those responsible. A committee of the protesters demanded that the government stop a military operation in their area, withdraw a five-year-old curfew and compensate the victims.

"Where we should go to seek justice?" asked protester Gulajab Afridi.

"There is dark night in Khyber Agency. There is no one to check the barbarism of the Frontier Corps against local people. Our blood is worth nothing."

He said villagers were trapped between the military and the militants.

"The militants of Lashkar-e-Islam wanted us to stay in our homes and don't want us to vacate our villages but when we stay there, the security forces arrest us on charges of supporting the militants," said 45-year old Haji Gul Jabbar Afridi.

Human rights groups have for years accused the security forces of abductions and killings. The security forces deny that.

The rights group Amnesty International said in a recent report that civilians in the ethnic Pashtun areas along the Afghan border, where Taliban and al Qaeda militants operate, are frequently abducted, tortured and executed by either the military or the militants.

The military strongly refuted the report.

While the Frontier Corps declined to comment a force official speculated that the killings might have been done by militants in disguise.

"They were the militants who wear Frontier Corps uniform and kidnap people and later kill them just to create hatred among the people against Pakistani security forces," he said.

France in 'direct combat' in Mali within hours

French troops in two armored personnel carriers drive through Mali's capital Bamako on the road to Mopti Tuesday Jan. 15, 2013. French forces led an all-night aerial bombing campaign Tuesday to wrest control of a small Malian town from armed Islamist extremists who seized the area, including its strategic military camp. A a convoy of 40 to 50 trucks carrying French troops crossed into Mali from Ivory Coast as France prepares for a possible land assault. Several thousand soldiers from the nations neighboring Mali are also expected to begin arriving in coming days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

In this picture dated Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013 and released by the French Army Communications Audiovisual office (ECPAD) s French soldiers of the 2nd Marine Infantry Regiment based in Le Mans, western France, listen to their officer during a briefing at Bamako airport, Mali. An official at France's Defense Ministry says the country will "gradually deploy" a total of 2,500 troops to Mali, and the French president says the military operation will last until security has been restored and African forces are ready to take charge. (AP Photo/Arnaud Roine, ECPAD)

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours."

French ground operations began overnight in Mali, Adm. Edouard Guillaud, the French military chief of staff, said on Europe 1 television. France's Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on RTL radio that soldiers were headed away from the relative safety of the capital toward the rebel strongholds in the north.

Residents of Niono, a city in the center of Mali which is just south of a town that was overrun by the jihadists earlier this week, said they saw trucks of French soldiers arrive overnight. The natural target for the French infantry is Diabaly, located 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of the capital and roughly 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Niono. French warplanes have carried out airstrikes on Diabaly since the weekend, when a column of dozens of rebel vehicles cut off the road out of Diabaly and seized the town as well as its military camp.

Ibrahim Komnotogo, a resident of Diabaly who heads a USAID-financed rice agriculture project, happened to be outside the town when the jihadists encircled it. He has 20 employees and contractors who he says are stuck inside the town, which has a population of 35,000. He told The Associated Press that al-Qaida-linked rebels have sealed off the roads and are preventing people from leaving.

Komnotogo says he fears the Islamists are planning to hide within the mud-walled neighborhoods and use the population as a human shield.

"The jihadists have split up. They don't move around in big groups ... they are out in the streets, in fours, and fives and sixes, and they are living inside the most inhabited neighborhoods," he said, explaining that they had taken over the homes of people who managed to flee before the road was cut off.

French warplanes bombarded the military camp, but there have been no airstrikes inside the actual town, which begins at the eastern wall of the garrison. Residents have evacuated the neighborhood called Bordeaux, after its sister city in France, which is only 500 meters (yards) from the camp, he said. They have moved mostly into a quarter called Berlin, about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from the military installation.

"They are preventing the population from leaving. We have been trying to get our employees out, but they can't leave," said Komnotogo. "They have parked their pickup trucks inside the courtyards of empty homes. They have beards. And they wear boubous (a flowing robe). No one approaches them. Everyone is afraid," he said.

French President Francois Hollande authorized the airstrikes last Friday after the Islamists began a push southward toward the capital from the northern half of Mali that they control. They seized the Afghanistan-sized north last April in the chaos following a coup in Mali's normally-stable capital.

Five days of airstrikes have done little to erode the Islamist gains in Mali, which some in the West fear could turn the region into a launching pad for terrorist attacks. The bombardments began in the town of Konna, which the rebels occupied last Thursday. After initially saying they had stopped the rebel advance, Le Drian on Tuesday acknowledged that Konna was still in the hands of the rebels.

Sahara Media, a Mauritanian-based website that the jihadists use to post videos and messages, published a video allegedly from Ansar Dine fighters in Konna, posing with the city's sign.

A member from the rebel group, one of three extremist organizations operating in north Mali, identified as Abou El Habib Sidi Mohamed, a member of Ansar Dine's communications team, said: "Thank you to God, who encourages jihad and the application of Sharia on this Earth, for we are now standing in the town of Konna, on this day, Jan. 14, 2013."

The seizure of Diabaly brings the Islamists to only 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the capital. Konna, the closest point where they were known to be before, is 680 kilometers (425 miles) away.

The ground assault reverses France's earlier insistence that it would provide only air and logistical support for a military intervention, which would be led by African troops. "Now we're on the ground," Guillaud said. "We will be in direct combat within hours."

On Tuesday, France announced it tripling the number of troops deployed to Mali from 800 to 2,500. The offensive was to have been led by thousands of African troops pledged by Mali's neighbors, but they have yet to arrive, leaving France alone to lead the operation.

Guillaud said the militant groups have a history of taking human shields and France would do its utmost to make sure civilians are not wrongly targeted. "When in doubt, we will not fire," he said.

A resident of Niono said that some residents of the besieged town had managed to slip through the rebel noose. They were arriving on foot, said Mamadou Haidara,

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Hinnant reported from Paris. Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali contributed to this report.

France launches ground campaign against Mali rebels

BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - French troops launched their first ground operation against Islamist rebels in Mali on Wednesday in a crucial action to dislodge al Qaeda-linked fighters who have resisted six days of air strikes.

France called for international support against Islamist insurgents it says are a threat to Africa and the West and acknowledged it faced a long fight against well-equipped and determined militant fighters who seized Mali's vast desert north last year.

After Islamist threats to exact revenge for France's dramatic intervention, an al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for a raid on a gas field in Algeria in which seven foreigners were kidnapped and a French national killed.

A column of French armoured vehicles moved into position on Tuesday at the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital Bamako. With the Malian army securing the northern region near the Mauritanian border, Islamist fighters were encircled in the nearby town of Diabaly.

French army chief Edouard Guillaud said his ground forces were starting their campaign against the alliance of Islamist fighters, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM with Mali's home grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA militant movements.

"In the coming hours -- but I cannot tell you if it's in one hour or 72 hours -- yes, of course we will be fighting them directly," he told Europe 1 radio.

In Niono, a resident reported seeing French and Malian troops in armoured vehicles heading toward Islamist rebel lines. Fighting was reported in Diabaly but it was not immediately clear if French ground forces were involved.

Guillaud said French military strikes were being hampered because militants were using the civilian population as a shield.

"We categorically refuse to make the civilian population take a risk. If in doubt, we will not shoot," he said. Residents who fled Diabaly confirmed the Islamists had used the towns inhabitants to protect themselves in recent days.

French fighter jets, meanwhile, struck the headquarters of the Islamic police in Niafunke, a small town on the Niger river near the ancient caravan route of Timbuktu, residents said.

Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian acknowledged that France faced a difficult operation, particularly in Western Mali where AQIM's mostly foreign fighters have camps. Mauritania has pledged to close its porous frontier to the Islamists.

"It's tough. We were aware from the beginning it would be a very difficult operation," Le Drian said.

WAITING FOR AFRICAN TROOPS

President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday French forces would remain in Mali until stability returned to the West African nation. Hollande said France hoped, however, to hand over to African forces in its former colony, "in the coming days or weeks."

Military chiefs from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS met for a second day in Bamako on Wednesday in a bid to hammer out the details of their U.N.-mandated deployment.

With African troops facing huge logistical and transport challenges to quickly deploy their troops, Germany promised two Transall military transport planes to fly soldiers from around the region to Bamako.

Hollande's bold intervention in Mali, which has helped to end his reputation for dithering, brings risks for eight French hostages held by AQIM in the Sahara as well as the 30,000 French citizens living across West Africa.

AQIM and Ansar Dine have vowed to take revenge for France's intervention on its interests around the globe.

In Algeria, where AQIM has its roots, militants seized five Japanese nationals, a French citizen and an Irishman from an oil facility in Ain Amenas in southern Algeria on Wednesday, local and diplomatic sources told Reuters. A French national was killed in the raid.

The field, located close to the border with Libya, is operated by a joint venture including BP, Norwegian oil firm Statoil and Algerian state company Sonatrach.

The conflict in Mali raised concerns across mostly Muslim West Africa of a radicalisation of Islam in the region. In Senegal, a traditionally moderate Islamic country, President Macky Sall warned citizens to be vigilant for attacks.

"We must be on the watch in our towns and villages because infiltrations are taking place," he said in a speech on Tuesday. "You will hear foreign preachers talking in the name of Islam. You must denounce them to authorities."

The fighting in Mali, a landlocked state at the heart of West Africa, has displaced an estimated 30,000 people. Hundreds have fled across the border into neighbouring Mauritania and Niger in recent days.

"We were all afraid. Many young fighters have enrolled with them recently," said Mahamadou Abdoulaye, 35, a truck driver who fled from the northern Gao region of Mali into Niger. "They are newly arrived, they cannot manage their weapons properly. There's fear on everybody's face."