Iraqi suicide bomb claims 51

A huge explosion detonated by a suicide attacker in a bomb-laden lorry tore through central Baqouba today, killing 51 people and injuring scores more.

At least 40 people were injured in the blast outside al-Najda police station, an Iraqi police recruiting centre in the turbulent city of Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official.

US Army Captain Marshall Jackson said the blast was caused by an explosives-filled white truck “right in the heart of Baqouba”.

He said that all the casualties were civilians.

The blast destroyed nearby shops and turned cars into mangled, burned out wrecks. Charred and dismembered bodies lay in a street amid pools of blood, building debris and shattered glass.

The body of one victim lay underneath a slab of concrete, while emergency crews carried the bodies of injured and the dead into waiting ambulances.

Baqouba has been the scene of regular anti-coalition attacks since US-led forces invaded Iraq in March, 2003, but fighters have also targeted Iraqi police forces, who are regarded as easier targets than the better equipped American troops.

On July 19, a fuel tanker truck ploughed into a police station in southwest Baghdad, detonating and killing at least nine people and wounding more than 60.

Iraqi officials expect attacks to continue and intensify as the country tries to edge toward democracy they anticipate that the national conference, expected before the end of this month, to be a major terror target.

In early morning clashes southeast of Baghdad, 35 insurgents and seven Iraqi soldiers were killed, Polish Lieut Colonel Artur Domanski, a multinational force spokesman, said.

Another 10 soldiers from the Iraqi security forces were wounded in the joint operation with US Army special forces and Ukrainian troops in the south-central Iraqi city of Suwariyah, Domanski said. No multi-national or US troops were injured.

Domanski added that some 40 insurgents were captured.

A US soldier was killed and three others injured while on patrol in northern Iraq.

The soldiers, from the 1st Infantry Division, were travelling in an armoured Humvee when the bomb detonated late on Tuesday in the town of Balad-Ruz, about 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to army spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell.

In what appeared to be a separate incident, nine Iraqi civilians were injured in another roadside bombing in Balad-Ruz late on Tuesday after a US convoy had passed by, according to Baqouba General Hospital official Abbas Fadhil.

In the northern city of Kirkuk today, gunmen in a car shot dead local policeman Udai Saddam as he waited for a taxi to get to work, Iraqi police spokesman Sarhat Qadr said.

Qadr also said that two men trying to plant a bomb on an oil pipeline near Kirkuk were killed early today when the explosive device detonated prematurely.

He said no damage was caused to the pipeline in the Kibrit region.