IRAQ: Bombing in Hilla outside an army recruiting office kills 12, wounds 38

A bomb apparently left on a parked bicycle blasted a crowd of young Iraqi men outside an army recruiting office early on Wednesday (August 30), killing 12 people and wounding 38, police said. Hilla provincial police spokesman Captain Muthanna al-Mamuri said the bicycle appeared to have been left early in the morning, laden with an explosive package, close to the office in the centre of Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad. It went off around 7 a.m. (0400 GMT), once a crowd had gathered. It followed several days of heavy bloodshed outside the capital, as U.S. and Iraq troops have mounted a major security crackdown in Baghdad itself. "The blast took place at 0700 (0400 GMT) targeting our son. My husband was wounded and he shouted 'I was wounded, help me'. I ran to his aid and evacuated him and I shouted for help and people gathered and ambulances arrived," said one woman at the blast site. Recruitment centres for the Iraqi army and police, key elements of Washington's strategy for pulling out its own troops, have been frequent targets for insurgents from the Sunni Arab minority, including al Qaeda Islamists, who oppose the rise of the Shi'ite Muslim majority in U.S.-backed elections. The mainly Shi'ite city of Hilla, close to the site of ancient Babylon, is surrounded by Sunni rural areas. It has seen some of the deadliest sectarian bomb attacks over the past two years, including the bloodiest single blast in Iraq, when 125 people, many of them police recruits, were killed by a suicide car bomber in February 2005.

ITN Source | August 30, 2006

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