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HOPES that Iraq was heading towards a more peaceful
future suffered a brutal setback yesterday with one
of the bloodiest attacks the country has seen since
elections were held there in January.
The targets were men who had gathered in a northern
town to sign up for the police force many hope will
one day bring stability to their war-torn country.
As scores of job applicants waited at a police
recruitment centre in the Kurdish city of Irbil,
they were joined in line by a suicide attacker
carrying hidden explosives.
Moments later about 60 people were dead and another
150 injured as he triggered his deadly load.
A Sunni militant group, Ansar al-Sunnah, claimed
responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement
posted on the internet that it was done in revenge
for Kurdish co-operation with United States forces.
At least seven cars parked near the recruitment
centre were destroyed by the blast in an upmarket
neighbourhood that includes a Sheraton hotel.
Several nearby buildings were damaged. Pools of
blood lay on the street outside as ambulances and
cabs arrived at the chaotic scene to take casualties
to hospitals in the city, which is 220 miles north
of Baghdad.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest by
insurgents in Iraq since 28 February, 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 most lethal of the
insurgency.
In Irbil, police captain Othman Aziz said an Iraqi
man stood among dozens of recruits who were in line
outside the two-storey building, where every entrant
is searched by guards. Shortly before reaching the
entrance, the attacker detonated himself, Mr Aziz
said.
Iraqi civilian Hawra Mohammed, 37, said he had just
dropped his brother Ahmed, 32, at the centre to
apply for a job and driven away when the explosion
occurred.
When Mr Mohammed went back, he found his brother
lying in the street, bleeding and unconscious.
"I lifted my brother on to my shoulders and took him
to a nearby hospital," Mr Mohammed said. "The blood
on my shirt is my brother’s."
Militants have stepped up attacks across Iraq in the
last week, often targeting convoys of US and Iraqi
troops, and Iraqi police on patrol or at recruitment
centres.
A key goal of US troops is eventually to train
enough Iraqi security forces to reduce the role now
being played by the Americans in fighting the
insurgency.
In Baghdad, two national assembly members from
Iraq’s Kurdish and Sunni minorities, condemned the
attack in Irbil.
"This is a horrible crime and a massacre," Kurdish
legislator Fouad Massoum said.
Mohsin al-Jarwa, a Sunni politician, said: "This is
an inhuman operation, killing the sons of the land
who were coming to protect Iraq."
He added: "I don’t believe those who carried this
out were Iraqis. Iraqis don’t kill Iraqis, and I
strongly condemn this terrorist act."
www.scotsman.com
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