Posted on 12-4-2004

36 dead in Baghdad suicide bombing

Iraqis seeking work with US forces today suffered a second devastating suicide bombing attack in as many days when an explosives-packed car rammed into an army recruitment centre in Baghdad.
At least 36 people died in the attack, but Iraq's deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, said that the final toll could be as high as 47, with 50 people injured.

Yesterday, a truck bombing of police recruits in Iskandariya, a small town 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killed at least 50 people.

US officials have warned of a possible increase in attacks, particularly against Iraqis, as insurgents try to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government, which is planned for June 30.

Mr Ibrahim, speaking today, told reporters that "this crime [will] not deter the people's march toward freedom".

The Baghdad army recruitment centre, about a mile from the Coalition Provisional Authority's high security compound, was hit by the blast at 7.25am local time (0425 GMT) as around 300 Iraqis gathered outside its locked gates, waiting for it to open.

Some of the men were looking to join the military, with others waiting to leave for a training camp in Jordan.

Ghasan Sameer, 32, an officer in the new Iraqi army, told the Associated Press from his hospital bed: "I saw a white Oldsmobile slowly approaching.

"It ran over some people and exploded. I was blown up in the air and saw fire and body parts all around me." His legs were broken, and he also suffered shrapnel wounds.

Amer Hussein, 25, his body heavily burned, moaned in pain as attendants wrapped his right leg in cotton gauze. Mr Hussein's left leg had been severed at the ankle, and a pool of blood had formed under his bed.

The US military estimated that the bomb contained between 135 and 225 kilos of explosives.

The blast comes at a time when a team of UN diplomats is in Iraq to determine whether it is practical and safe enough to hold direct elections for the new Iraqi government, which it is proposed will take power in July.

Although attacks on the US military have decreased over recent weeks, there has been a string of bombings targeting Iraqis, particularly those working with the occupying US forces.

"This could be a new trend of terrorist activity - it could be part of the ongoing pattern of intimidation we've seen of late," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the US military's deputy operations chief in Baghdad, said.

"We have stated, numerous times, that in the lead-up to governance, there could be an upsurge in the violence."

Colonel Ralph Baker, of the 1st Armoured Division, said that there was no immediate indication of who was behind the attack.

However, he added that it resembled "the operating technique" of al-Qaida or Ansar al-Islam. He said it would not stop progress towards creating Iraqi security forces.

"A lot of young men in this country want to be part of the solution," he told CNN. "I don't think that it will have a tremendous effect on recruiting."

US forces have been preparing the Iraqi police and military for taking a larger role in tackling the anti-US insurgency.

The Baghdad bombing was the latest in a series of suicide attacks on Iraqis. Ten days ago, a double suicide bombing claimed the lives of more than 100 Iraqis in the Kurdish town of Irbil.

Days earlier, around 25 Iraqis were killed by a suicide car bomb as they queued for work at the gates of the US headquarters in Baghdad.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, yesterday said that the Iskandariya police station attack was in line with plans outlined in a letter sent from an anti-US fighter to al-Qaida's leadership.

The letter asked for help in launching attacks against the Shia Muslims to undermine the future Iraqi government.

The goal of the attacks would be to foment civil war. The letter's purported author Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Palestinian-Jordanian suspected of al-Qaida links and believed to be at large in Iraq.

The author boasted that he had organised 25 suicide attacks.