Baghdad Bomber Kills 21
A suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a crowd of army recruits Tuesday, killing 21 other people in the deadliest attack in Baghdad since last week's election and highlighting a recent shift by insurgents to use human bombs instead of cars.
Insurgents are strapping explosives on the bodies of volunteers to penetrate the network of blast walls, checkpoints and other security measures designed to block vehicle bombs.
Several such attackers tried to disrupt voting in Baghdad on election day but were unable to get into polling stations. On Monday, a suicide bomber walked into a crowd of Iraqi policemen in the northern city of Mosul and detonated explosives, killing 12 of them.
Iraqi authorities initially said the Baghdad recruiting center was attacked by mortar fire, but witnesses reported only a single explosion and the U.S. military said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber on foot.
Attacks have steadily risen since the Jan. 30 elections, when a massive U.S. and Iraqi security operation prevented insurgents from disrupting the vote. Those measures, including a ban on most private vehicles, closing the borders and an extended curfew, were relaxed soon afterward.
In other developments:
Final results of the election are expected this week. The latest partial returns released Tuesday showed a Kurdish ticket had moved into second place behind a coalition of Shiite religious parties, relegating a faction led by U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to third place.
First election returns from the Sunni heartland — including Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit — confirmed on Monday that many Sunnis stayed away from the ballot box, leaving the field to Shiite and Kurdish candidates. A Shiite-dominated ticket backed by the Shiite clergy leads among the 111 candidate lists, with a final tally of last week's National Assembly election expected by week's end.
Allawi, who favors strong ties with the United States, had hoped to emerge as a compromise choice for prime minister, but those on the Shiite cleric-backed ticket say they want one of their own for the top job.
Kurds, estimated at 15-20 percent of the population, gave most of their votes to a joint ticket made up of the two major Kurdish parties, which was in second with about 24 percent of the votes reported as of Monday. One of the Kurdish leaders, Jalal Talabani, has announced his candidacy for the presidency.
Allawi's ticket trailed with about 13 percent of the vote, with the Shiite ticket leading with about half the votes. Shiites comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Tuesday's attacks were the latest sign that insurgents are stepping up their assault on Iraq's security forces, which the United States hopes can assume a greater role once a newly elected government takes office.
A day earlier, a suicide bomber also wandered into a crowd of Iraqi policemen near a hospital in the northern city of Mosul, killing 12 officers.
The attacks by bombers on foot point to a shift in rebel tactics, as concrete blast walls and roadblocks have made it harder for guerillas to strike at Iraqi security forces with car bombs.
The bombings, shootings and kidnappings have shattered a brief downturn in violence after the Jan. 30 elections, the first nationwide balloting since the fall of Saddam in April 2003.
Election officials acknowledged thousands of people in the Sunni-dominated Mosul area who wanted to vote during the balloting were unable to because of security. Fewer than a third of the planned 330 polling centers in Mosul and the surrounding province managed to open on election day, officials said.