Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani made a call for unity. “Let’s turn this day of remembrance of our martyrs, our loved ones whose blood were mixed, who were martyred together, into unity and collaboration to achieve their goals,” he tweeted on Monday.
On February 1, 2004, extremist Islamist suicide bombers attacked the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Erbil. The offices were crowded for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. More than 100 people were killed and at least 245 others injured.
The attackers were members of a new group called Ansar al-Sunna. Their “first activity was against the two main political parties in Southern [Iraqi] Kurdistan,” according to Mokhtar Hooshmand, a prominent Kurdish political researcher.
On Monday, Kurdish officials and families of those killed visited the monument erected in Erbil’s Sami Abdulrahman Park to pay their respects and lay wreaths. The names of the victims are inscribed on the monument.
The park is named after then-deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, Sami Abdulrahman, who lost his life along with his son, Salah, in the attack.
The relationship between the KDP and PUK has fluctuated over the years. In the 1990s they fought a civil war before agreeing to govern jointly. In 2019, they renewed their commitment to cooperation for the term of the current government.
In the face of an economic crisis and critical budget negotiations with Baghdad, the KDP and PUK met last November to hash out problems between them and form a united front.
