Blast Kills 25 At Iraqi Recruiting Center
A suicide bomber hit a police recruiting center in Fallujah on Wednesday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 50, police said.
Ten policemen were among the dead in the attack, according to a police official in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Fallujah, in restive Anbar province, is 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Police said the bomber detonated his explosives vest at the third of four checkpoints as he stood among recruits who were lining up to apply for jobs on the force. The center had only been opened on Saturday in a primary school in eastern Fallujah.
The U.S. military and Iraqi army and police were running the center along with members of Anbar Salvation Council, a loose grouping of Sunni tribes that have banded together to fight al Qaeda.
Police stations and recruiting posts have been a favorite target of Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda through the course of the Iraq war.
Meanwhile, as the aggressive search for five kidnapped British citizens continued around Baghdad, a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that the hunt for two U.S. soldiers missing since an ambush on May 12 has slowed down.
Brigadier General Perry Wiggins says the military is still dedicating a "significant amount of assets" to the search for the two soldiers, but says it's not as intense as it was.
The troops were ambushed south of Baghdad nearly three weeks ago. Four soldiers were killed in the initial attack and the body of a third kidnapped soldier was found days later.
Wiggins says there has been a side benefit to the search. Patrols have uncovered weapons caches and bomb-making facilities.
The general says the hunt is also continuing for the five British citizens kidnapped Tuesday in a daring raid on an office of the Iraqi Finance Ministry. He says the U.S. is doing all it can to help find them.
A procession of mourners, some of them women wailing and beating their chests, marched Thursday through Sadr City behind a small bus carrying the coffins of two people who police said were killed in a U.S. helicopter strike before dawn.
The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged attack in the second day of a search for the Britons who were abducted from a Finance Ministry data processing building in eastern Baghdad.
A U.S. military statement, however, said U.S. and Iraqi forces had arrested two "members of the secret cell terrorist network" on Thursday in Sadr City. There was no mention of fatalities.
Associated Press Television news video tape from Sadr City showed the coffins of the victims atop a small bus with men and women walking behind, crying. A young boy could be seen sitting next to the coffins on the bus.
A car near where the attack happened was punctured with big holes as if hit by an air strike.
A police officer in Sadr City, who refused to allow use of his name because he feared retribution, said the helicopter hit a house and car at 4:30 a.m., killing two elderly people sleeping on the roof of their home, a common practice in the extreme heat of Iraq through late spring and summer.
The officer said a 13-year-old boy was injured.
Also in Sadr City raids, which the U.S. has been conducting with a select unit of Iraqi army forces, Shiite cleric Abdul-Zahra al-Suwaidi claimed his home was raided and ransacked by American forces in the early morning hours Thursday.
Al-Suwaidi, who runs the Sadr City political office of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said he was sleeping elsewhere at the time of the raid, expecting that he would be targeted. He said his home was badly damaged and a small amount of money was taken.
The U.S. military also did not immediately comment on al-Suwaidi claim.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles had taken up positions around Sadr City at nightfall Wednesday.
In other developments:
Much of the Mahdi Army militia is said to be loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who resurfaced last week after nearly four months in hiding, apparently in Iran, and demanded U.S. troops leave Iraq.
Al-Sadr's return appeared to be partly an effort to regain control over his militia, which had begun fragmenting. It was unclear whether the 33-year-old cleric would have been aware of or condoned the kidnapping of the five British citizens — four bodyguards and an employee of a management consulting firm.
A top Interior Ministry official, who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said suspicion immediately fell on the Mahdi Army because it was in control of the area around the data processing center and would have blocked such a massive operation by another group.
Fatih-Allah's report to Finance Minister Bayan Jabr revealed key new details about the attack. Portions of the report were read to The Associated Press on the telephone by a government official who did so on condition of anonymity because the document was not for public distribution.
The report said four men in civilian clothing appeared at the center about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday — 15 minutes before the kidnapping.
The account said the men claimed they were from the government anti-fraud commission and looked through each room in the center, then quickly left the building.
At about 11 a.m. dozens of men in army and police uniforms, the report said, burst into the building, disarmed guards and went directly into the room where the five Britons were working. The five were seized and rushed out of the building to 19 waiting four-wheel-drive vehicles. The convoy then drove away to the east.
The building sits on a side street off Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad and not far from Baghdad's district of Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.
The five kidnapped Britons included four bodyguards working for the Montreal-based security firm GardaWorld and one employee of BearingPoint, a U.S.-based management consulting firm.
Mahdi Army members, who refused to allow use of their names for fear of arrest, said searching Sadr City was likely to be pointless. They said their organization, if involved, would have moved the Britons to locations outside Baghdad.