A car bomb Monday evening targeting a hotel in Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdish Autonomous Region left a guard dead and 28 injured, some of them seriously, police and eyewitnesses said. ( dpa )
The hotel, on the city's main Salem street, was hit and security chief Hasan Nuri is believed to be among the wounded, police sources told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
But the city's security department denied Nuri was wounded in the attack.
Another police source told VOI that a security guard at the hotel was killed.
Eyewitnesses saw several cars on fire and ambulances hurrying to the scene of the blast, which was heard across the city.
Sulaymaniyah, one of the largest cities in the Kurdish region, prides itself on its state of stability and calm. The last major attack in the city was in October 2005 when triple blasts by car bombs left scores dead and injured.