Suicide Bombing Kills 60 In Iraq
An Iraqi standing in line outside a police recruitment center with job applicants blew himself up Wednesday, killing about 60 Iraqis and wounding some 150 in one of the deadliest insurgent attacks in more than two months, officials said.
A Sunni militant group, Ansar al-Sunnah, claimed responsibility, saying the attack in the Kurdish city of Irbil was in retaliation for Kurdish militias working with U.S. forces.
Several buildings were damaged and at least seven parked cars were destroyed by the blast in an upscale neighborhood in this city 220 miles north of Baghdad. Rescuers carried casualties past pools of blood in the street and loaded them into ambulances and cabs.
Hospitals became so crowded that staff at one used a loudspeaker to give out the names and room numbers of the wounded to people who rushed there frantically looking for relatives.
About 60 people were killed and 150 wounded, the U.S. military said in a statement.
But U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer James Drake said there were conflicting reports about whether the blast was caused by a man carrying hidden explosives or a car bomb. The claim of responsibility by Ansar al-Sunnah also said its attack involved a suicide car bomb.
In other recent developments:
The militant group Ansar al-Sunnah Army posted a statement on its Web site saying it was behind the blast and claiming it was staged by a suicide car bomber. The group has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on Iraqi security forces and a 2004 twin suicide bombing targeting Kurds in Irbil that killed 109 people.
In its claim, the group praised Wednesday's attacker as a martyr and a "heroic lion." The group said the attack was revenge for Kurdish security forces that have "bowed their heads to the Crusaders and raised their spears against the Muslims and fought alongside the Americans."
According to statistics compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington, insurgents had killed 616 Iraqi police officers this year through Monday.
In Irbil, police Capt. Othman Aziz said an Iraqi man stood among dozens of recruits in line outside the two-story building, where every entrant is searched by guards. Shortly before reaching the entrance, the attacker detonated himself, Aziz said.
Iraqi civilian Hawra Mohammed, 37, said he had just dropped his brother Ahmed, 32, at the center to apply for a job and had driven away when the explosion occurred.
When Hawra raced back, he found his brother lying in a street, bleeding and unconscious. But Ahmed soon began to move.
"I lifted my brother onto my shoulders and took him to a nearby hospital," Hawra said. "The blood on my shirt is my brother's."
Hawra said he nearly fainted at the sight of dead bodies. Many of the victims were unemployed, just like his brother, and wanted to earn money as policemen, he said.
The attack was the deadliest by insurgents in Iraq since Feb. 28, when a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of police and National Guard recruits outside a medical clinic in Hillah, south of the capital. That attack, which killed 125 people and wounded more than 140, was the single deadliest in the insurgency.
"This is a horrible crime and a massacre," Kurdish legislator Fouad Massoum said in an interview outside the National Assembly. "Cooperation between the people and the security forces is necessary to fight terrorists."
Militants have stepped up their attacks in the last week, often targeting convoys of U.S. and Iraqi troops as well as Iraqi police on patrol or at recruitment centers. A key goal of U.S. troops is to train enough Iraqi security forces to reduce the American role in fighting the insurgency.
Including Wednesday's bombing, some 200 people have been killed by insurgent attacks since last week's approval of a partial Cabinet that largely excluded leaders from the Sunni Arab minority, the formerly dominant group under Saddam Hussein that is believed to be the backbone of the insurgency.
In Baghdad, Sunni Arab lawmaker Mohsin al-Jarwa said: "This is an inhuman operation, killing the sons of the land who were coming to protect Iraq."