(Police and firemen sift through the rubble after a suicide truck bomb attack outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the political party of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani in Kirkuk, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, September 17, 2006. Four blasts killed 23 people in Iraq's ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk on Sunday, including a huge suicide truck bomb, a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged divided Iraqis to embrace reconciliation. Photo: Reuters)

Related: Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 20 in Northern Iraq

              13 Killed in Suicide Bombing Attack in Iraq's Ramadi

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday that there is a grave danger that Iraq will break down if alienation and violence persist much longer.
  
Addressing foreign ministers at the high-level meeting on Iraq on the sideline of the annual general debate of the UN General Assembly, Annan said Iraq and its leaders are now at an important crossroads.
  
"If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi State will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."