47 dead in Baghdad bomb

A suicide bomber blew up his car outside an army recruiting centre in central Baghdad today killing around 47 people and injuring 50.

It was the second deadly suicide attack in two days on Iraqis working with the US-led coalition, following a truck bombing against a police station south of Baghdad that killed 53 people and wounded scores, including would-be Iraqi recruits applying for jobs.

About 300 Iraqis were today outside the recruiting station, some lined-up to join the military and others waiting to depart for a training camp in Jordan, when the car blew up.

Iraq’s deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, said 47 people were killed and 50 injured.

He told reporters: “This crime will not deter the people’s march toward freedom.”

The blast was at about 7.25am local time, less than a mile from the green zone, the high-security area where US administrators are based, a coalition spokesman said.

US troops immediately sealed off the area.

Colonel Ralph Baker of the 1st Armoured Division said a man driving a white 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra detonated about 300 to 500 pounds of explosives.

Ghasan Sameer, 32, an officer in the new Iraqi army, who was in hospital with broken legs and shrapnel wounds. Said: “I saw a white Oldsmobile slowly approaching.

“It ran over some people and exploded,” Sameer said from his bed. “I was blown up in the air and saw fire and body parts all around me.”

Hussein Raad, 20, was in the queue of volunteers when he noticed a car approaching “and suddenly felt the blast”.

“The blast threw me a few yards away,” Raad said. He was among the wounded.

In the neighbouring bed at Yarmouk hospital, Amer Hussein, 25, his body heavily burned, moaned in pain as attendants wrapped his right leg in cotton gauze. Hussein’s left leg was severed at the ankle, and a pool of blood had gathered under his bed.

Officials at Yarmouk said they had received eight wounded and that others were taken elsewhere.

The total number of wounded was not known, the coalition spokesman said.

Colonel Baker said there was no immediate indication who was behind the attack but said it resembled “the operating technique” of al-Qaida or Ansar al-Islam.

“A lot of young men in this country want to be part of the solution,” Baker told CNN. “I don’t think it will have a tremendous effect on recruiting.”

It was at least the ninth vehicle bombing in Iraq this year and followed warnings from occupation officials that insurgents would step up attacks against Iraqis who work with the coalition, especially ahead of the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government.

US forces have been preparing the Iraqi police and military to take a larger role in battling the anti-US insurgency that has been blamed on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and foreign Islamic militants.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that attacks on Iraqi security personnel had not deterred more from wanting to join.

“We find people are still lining up, volunteering, interested in participating and serving,” Rumsfeld said in Washington.

Insurgents have mounted a string of car and suicide bombings in recent weeks. The deadliest so far has been in the northern city of Irbil on February 1 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up at two Kurdish party offices celebrating a Muslim holiday, killing at least 109 people.

On January 18, a suicide car bomb exploded near the main gate to the US-led coalition’s headquarters in Baghdad, killing at least 31 people.