Death toll rises to 20 in Baghdad suicide bombing

A suicide bomber detonated his car today as a group of police recruits left their academy in Baghdad, killing 20 in the latest strike on security officials.

Police said the suicide bomber was waiting on the street outside the fortified academy near the Interior Ministry headquarters in an eastern neighbourhood in the Iraqi capital. As the crowd of recruits left the compound’s security barriers and walked into the road, police said the bomber drove toward them and blew up his car.

“We heard a big explosion and the windows of the room shattered,” said Haider Mohammed, 44, an employee in the nearby Police Sports Club, about 100 yards from the academy’s gate. He described a horrific scene of burning cars, scattered pieces of burned flesh and wounded people flattened on the ground.

“Everybody here knows the time when the recruits come and go from the academy,” Mohammed said. “This is a breach of security.”

Five policemen were among the dead; the rest were recruits. Another 28 recruits and policemen were wounded.

Officials at three nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties.

Iraq’s police are generally considered to be the weakest element of the country’s security forces, which are attacked in bombings and drive-by shooting almost every day. The last big assault on police came in October, when 25 people were killed in a string of attacks that included two bombers slamming explosives-packed cars into police stations.

Some of Baghdad’s residents said today’s attack was rooted in political turbulence that has shaken Iraq in recent weeks.

In findings that were expected to hike already-simmering sectarian tensions, a judicial panel last week said that at least 150 attacks and assassinations since 2005 were linked to Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunni official.

The charges against al-Hashemi, who has sought haven from arrest in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, were first brought in December by the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Hashemi has denied the charges and is expected to give a speech in coming days to defend himself.