Dozens die in Iraq police bombing

At least 40 people have been killed and 75 wounded in a suicide bombing outside an Iraqi police station in a crowd of recruits waiting to apply for jobs.

Police said the bomber joined about 100 people outside the station on the outskirts of the city of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.

Insurgents have made recruitment centres a favourite target.

The death toll was still rising more than two hours after the bombing as loudspeakers from the city's mosques continued to call on people to donate blood for the wounded.

The group of recruits was the first to apply for 2,000 new police jobs that Iraq’s Interior Ministry recently approved for the surrounding Salahuddin province, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims.

They were waiting for interviews and medical checks as part of the application process.

Security measures are often loose just outside protective barriers at police stations amid the confusion caused by desperate jobseekers vying for work in a country with an unemployment rate as high as 30%.

The attack starkly displayed Iraqi forces’ failure to plug even the most obvious holes in their security as the US military prepares to withdraw from the country at the year’s end.

A similar strike on a recruitment centre in central Baghdad last August left 61 dead and 125 wounded in what was one of the deadliest attacks of the summer.