Bomber kills 35 as Iraqi police hunt 50 kidnap victims

A pair of suicide bombs ripped through a crowd of would-be police recruits in Baghdad on today, killing at least 35.

Another 56 people were wounded in the blast, in which the bombers detonated explosives strapped to their bodies simultaneously at exactly 10am (7am Irish Time), police Lt Maitham Abdul-Razaq said.

The attack outside the police recruiting station off western Baghdad’s Nissur Square was one of several today in the capital, where sectarian violence kills scores of people each week.

Just south of the city, police were searching for gunmen who killed 10 Shiite travellers and kidnapped about 50 others on Saturday night along a notoriously dangerous stretch of highway.

In other attacks today, a pair of roadside bombings targeting police patrols in Baghdad killed at least six passers-by and wounded six others, said police Captain Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

Two people were killed, including a police patrolman, and six injured by a car bomb in central Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, police Captain Mohammed Abdul Ghani said.

Another car bomb outside a market in Baghdad’s primarily Shiite downtown Karradah killed at least one person and wounded five others, while a similar bomb killed two people and injured 13 in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Radhwaniyah.

Unknown gunmen also shot to death police Brigadier Abdul-Mutalib Hassan as he was leaving his Karradah home for work. Hassan had been head of a police unit in charge of registering vehicles that is widely seen as a source of corruption.

Five people were killed in drive-by shootings in different parts of Baqouba, 35 miles north east of Baghdad. The victims included a teacher, taxi driver, labourer, truck driver and phone company worker.

Patrols were looking for the Sunni gunmen who ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint along the dangerous highway near the volatile town of Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in the so-called Triangle of Death.

The gunmen murdered 10 Shiite passengers before taking about 50 captives to an unknown location.

A leading Shiite politician warned that local tribes had armed themselves and were headed to the area to join in the search, a move likely to set off even greater bloodshed.

In an address to parliament, leading Shiite politician Abdul-Karim al-Anzi said the kidnappers had worn Iraqi army uniforms. He complained that security forces were doing little to capture the hostages.

“We demand that the government take quick action to send troops there in order to know the fate of those kidnapped,” al-Anzi said.

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said those kidnapped had been driving to Baghdad to shop and said police and soldiers were co-ordinating their search.

“The interior and defence ministries are giving attention to this case in order to arrest the criminals,” al-Bolani said.

Five bodies – all blindfolded and bound at the wrists and ankles – had also been recovered in various parts of eastern Baghdad early today, police said. All had been mutilated by torture, marking them as victims of death squads that regularly kidnap rivals from Iraq’s Muslim Sunni and Shiite sects.

Three more bodies were pulled from the Tigris River in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad.

US forces, meanwhile, said they detained 10 people suspected of having links to al Qaida in a raid in Baghdad early Saturday. The military said no one was killed or wounded in the raid, and said those detained “associated with terrorists who are involved in the housing, movement and enabling of foreign fighters, to include the organisation of suicide operations within Baghdad.”

The military said US forces aircraft also destroyed a booby-trapped building in the western city of Ramadi, where heavy fighting has been reported in recent days between US troops and Sunni insurgents.