Another bloody entry in Ansar al-Islam's bid to extend the "insurgent" terror campaign to Iraq's (relatively) stable Kurdish autonomous zone. The need to mollify these thugs may explain the increasing conservative Islamist tilt of the supposedly secular Kurdish regional authorities of late. From AlJazeera, May 9:

A lorry bomb has killed at least 14 people and wounded 87 in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, a Kurdish minister has said.

Kareem Sinjari, minister of internal affairs in Kurdistan, said Wednesday morning's bomb went off close to the regional government's interior ministry.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician, blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni Arab insurgent group, and Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish group with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Car bombs are rare in the autonomous Kurdish region, which has been largely spared from violence across Iraq.

Nonetheless, attacks in northern Iraq have increased in other mainly Kurdish towns in northern Iraq such as Kirkuk, as Sunni and Shia fighters flee a security crackdown in Baghdad...

Kareem Sinjari, minister of internal affairs in Kurdistan, said Wednesday morning's bomb went off close to the regional government's interior ministry.

Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish politician, blamed the attack on Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni Arab insurgent group, and Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish group with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Car bombs are rare in the autonomous Kurdish region, which has been largely spared from violence across Iraq.

Nonetheless, attacks in northern Iraq have increased in other mainly Kurdish towns in northern Iraq such as Kirkuk, as Sunni and Shia fighters flee a security crackdown in Baghdad.

And in more bad news from the contested city of Kirkuk:

Journalists killed
Also on Wednesday, four Iraqi journalists were killed as gunmen opened fire on their car near the northern city of Kirkuk.

The police said one of the journalists was the well-known director of a local media organisation which publishes several newspapers.

The attack took place southwest of Kirkuk near the small town of Rashad.

It was unclear if the shooting was random or because the four were journalists.

The Vienna-based International Press Institute said in April that 46 journalists were killed last year in Iraq, of whom 44 were Iraqis.

On Sunday, a Russian freelance photographer was killed in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad while on patrol with US forces.

Six soldiers were also killed in that attack.

See our last posts on Iraq and the struggle in Kurdistan.