Suicide bomber kills 12 in Iraq cafe

TIKRIT: A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a cafe in a town, north of the Iraqi capital on Saturday, killing at least 12 people, police said. Separately, unidentified gunmen shot two Iraqi television journalists dead as they were filming in the northern city of Mosul, security sources said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack. The bombing in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, follows an almost identical attack on the same cafe 40 days ago. "I received the corpse of my cousin. It was completely charred and difficult to identify," said Abdullah al-Baldawi. It was not clear who was behind the killing of the journalists. The journalists worked for Iraqi television channel al-Sharqiya News, which is often critical of the government. "They shot them in the chest and head, killing them instantly," said a security source who declined to be named. Iraq is considered one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. According to the Baghdad-based Journalism Freedoms Observatory, 261 journalists have been killed and 46 kidnapped since 2003, the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq. (Reuters)