Tikrit attack leaves eight police dead

In another attack targeting Iraqi security forces, a suicide car bomb destroyed a police minibus at a checkpoint in Saddam Hussein’s hometown today, killing at least eight policemen, officials said.

The attack in Tikrit was part of a surge of violence that has killed at least 255 people – many of them Iraqi soldiers and police – since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government on April 28, with seven Cabinet positions still undecided.

Those assaults included 73 people who died when suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their bodies set them off in lines of job applicants waiting outside two separate recruitment centres for security forces in Baghdad and the northern city of Irbil.

Iraq’s new Cabinet held its first meeting on Thursday. Al-Jaafari aide Laith Kuba said the seven vacant portfolios, including the key oil and defence ministries, would be filled by Saturday and parliament would be asked to vote on them on Sunday.

In the attack in Saddam’s hometown, a silver Opel packed with explosives – and with a taxi sign on its roof – destroyed the minibus at 5.30am irish time, said US Army 1st Sgt. Brian Thomas and Iraqi National Guard Major Salman Abdul Wahid.

At least eight policemen were killed, said police Lieutenant Colonel Saad Abdul Hamid and police Major Hakim al-Azawi. They said seven people were wounded: a policeman, two National Guardsmen and four civilians.

Initial reports by police had mistakenly said the attack involved explosives hidden inside the minibus and set off by remote control in Tikrit, which is 80 miles north of Baghdad.

In Thursday’s deadliest attack, an insurgent used a suicide bomber belt to walk up to an army recruitment centre in Baghdad which, like many others, have been turned into small fortresses of concrete blast walls and razor wire to prevent car bombings.

At al-Yarmouk Hospital, the morgue was overflowing with mangled bodies after the blast. One man lay screaming on his bed – both his legs had been blown off. Pools of blood covered the floor.

At least 13 people were killed and 20 wounded in the blast, Lieutenant Salam Wahab said at the recruitment centre.

A similar attack on Wednesday, in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in a line of police recruits in the northern city of Irbil, killed 60 Iraqis and wounded 150.

Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman, spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said there has been an escalation in the use of suicide belts since security was stepped up around recruitment centres and other insurgent targets. Recent raids in and around Baghdad uncovered some assembled car bombs, he said, and foiled many attacks.

“But it is rather difficult to find out about an explosive belt put on by a person,” Rahman said.

On January 30, Iraqis voted in historic parliamentary elections and private cars were banned from the streets. There were nine attacks that day by bombers who had explosives strapped to their bodies.

Insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and trained by the US-led coalition as part of its exit strategy in Iraq.

An estimated 1,800 Iraqi soldiers and police officers were killed between June 2004 and April 27 this year, the latest date for which statistics were available, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

At least nine policemen were killed in two attacks in western Baghdad on Thursday.