Iraq car bomb blast kills 20

A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside the Iraqi police academy in the northern city of Kirkuk today as hundreds of trainees and civilians were leaving for the day, killing at least 20 people and wounding 36, authorities said.

Ambulances raced to the scene, where seven cars were on fire. Rescuers ferried the wounded away on stretchers. Some waited for attention while sprawled on the building’s steps.

“This is a terrorist act against members of Iraqi police who were heading to their homes,” said Kirkuk police Colonel Sarhat Qadir.

Iraqi police sealed off roads leading to blast site and fired warning shots into the air to disperse weeping and frustrated people racing to the area to learn the fate of their relatives.

General Torhan Abdul-Rahman Yousif, the director of Kirkuk police, put the death toll at 20, with 36 others wound.

Militants waging a 16-month-old insurgency in Iraq have used car bombings, sabotage and kidnappings in an effort to destabilise the country and drive out coalition forces and reconstruction workers.

The last such attack occurred on August 27, when a car bomb exploded as a US military convoy moved through a traffic circle on the western edge of the northern city of Mosul, wounding 10 Iraqi civilians and one US soldier.