Baghdad - A police station in Tikrit was hit by a huge blast resulting in an unknown number of casualities, Iraq police said Sunday. The cause of the explosion has not yet been identified, the source added.
Security forces sealed off the roads leading to the site, as ambulances and fire trucks were heard rushing to the scene.
Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, is the hometown of the executed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a stronghold of the dictator's Baath party.
A verdict was expected Sunday in the Anfal case trial of six top defendants including Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as chemical Ali for the chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds.
An estimated 180,000 Kurds were killed in Saddam's campaign codenamed Operation Anfal (Spoils of War), when the Iraqi army allegedly carried out a scorched-earth campaign against hundreds of villages in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in 1987-1988.
Saddam Hussein was tried for genocide against the Kurds as part of the Anfal trial. He was found guilty and hanged last December 30 for the massacre of Shiites in Dujail in 1982.
