Iraq suicide blast kills at least 25
Police recruits were targeted in Diyala. It was the second major bombing in a week.
BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber with explosives hidden beneath his traditional robe blew himself up yesterday in a crowd of Iraqis trying to join the police force, killing at least 25 people in the second major bombing in Iraq this week.
The attack occurred in Jalula, a remote, impoverished town about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad that lies in Diyala province, where a U.S.-Iraqi offensive is being waged against the last major insurgent stronghold near the capital.
The bomber mingled in the crowd of would-be police recruits and then detonated explosives hidden beneath his dishdasha robe, police said. The bomb was packed with nails and ball bearings to maximize casualties, police said.
U.S. military officials said five policemen were among the dead.
The local police chief, Col. Ahmed Mahmoud Khalifa, said jobs in the police force were prized in Jalula, a mostly Sunni Arab town of 67,000 with a substantial Kurdish population, because unemployment is high.
He said tribal sheikhs had been asked to send recruits for a new police emergency-response unit, and applicants went to the police center yesterday to check whether they had been accepted.
"Today I was so happy to get a job at last to feed my wife and two kids," said Yasir Ramadan, 21, an applicant who was wounded by shrapnel and will need eye surgery. "I used to work as a day laborer in construction. But there's no construction in the area, and it's hard to find work."
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni Islamist extremists who operate in Diyala, which is among the most violent areas in the country.
Extremists often attack police stations and recruiting drives trying to disrupt U.S.-led efforts to build up local security forces and undermine support for the insurgency.
Nevertheless, several wounded applicants, who were taken to a hospital in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, said they would not be deterred by the attack.
"We will beat terrorism and al-Qaeda," said Yasir al-Dulaimi, 18, whose head and right arm were injured. "We will not abandon our work. If we do so, we will abandon our honor as well because al-Qaeda would take full control over our area."
Elsewhere in Diyala, a roadside bomb killed five members of a Sunni family traveling yesterday from Mandali on the Iranian border to visit a religious shrine.