Spring Break
Suicide bombing targets police recruits, kills 25
Robert H. Reid - AP
Issue date: 8/27/08 Section: News
He said tribal sheiks had been asked to send recruits for a new police emergency response unit, and applicants came to the police center Tuesday to check whether they had been accepted.
"Today I was so happy to get a job at last to feed my wife and two kids," said Yasir Ramadan, 21, an applicant who was wounded by shrapnel and will need eye surgery. "I used to work as a day laborer in construction. But there's no construction in the area, and it's hard to find work."
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni Islamist extremists that operate in Diyala, which is among the most violent areas in the country.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up among well-wishers welcoming home an Iraqi detainee released from U.S. custody, killing at least 25 people on the western outskirts of the Iraqi capital.
The victims included members of a U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer force raised to fight al-Qaida.
Militants often attack police stations and recruiting drives trying to disrupt U.S.-led efforts to build up local security forces and undermine support for the insurgency.
Nevertheless, several wounded applicants, who were taken to a hospital in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, said they would not be deterred by the attack.
"We will beat terrorism and al-Qaida," said Yasir al-Dulaimi, 18, whose head and right arm were injured. "We will not abandon our work.
If we do so, we will abandon our honor as well because al-Qaida would take full control over our area."
Elsewhere in Diyala, a roadside bomb killed five members of a Sunni family traveling Tuesday from Mandali on the Iranian border to visit a religious shrine.
The dead included two women and two children, Col. Sarchal Abdul-Karim said.
Also Tuesday, a bomb planted in a parked car blew up in the city of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.
A police official initially said four people were killed. However, another police official later said he only received word of wounded, and security officials at a local hospital said they knew of 12 people injured in the blast.
Tikrit was the late Saddam Hussein's hometown and had been a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency since the 2003 ouster of the Iraqi leader.
But it has enjoyed relative quiet since violence significantly dropped over the past year in much of Iraq.
"Today I was so happy to get a job at last to feed my wife and two kids," said Yasir Ramadan, 21, an applicant who was wounded by shrapnel and will need eye surgery. "I used to work as a day laborer in construction. But there's no construction in the area, and it's hard to find work."
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni Islamist extremists that operate in Diyala, which is among the most violent areas in the country.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up among well-wishers welcoming home an Iraqi detainee released from U.S. custody, killing at least 25 people on the western outskirts of the Iraqi capital.
The victims included members of a U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer force raised to fight al-Qaida.
Militants often attack police stations and recruiting drives trying to disrupt U.S.-led efforts to build up local security forces and undermine support for the insurgency.
Nevertheless, several wounded applicants, who were taken to a hospital in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, said they would not be deterred by the attack.
"We will beat terrorism and al-Qaida," said Yasir al-Dulaimi, 18, whose head and right arm were injured. "We will not abandon our work.
If we do so, we will abandon our honor as well because al-Qaida would take full control over our area."
Elsewhere in Diyala, a roadside bomb killed five members of a Sunni family traveling Tuesday from Mandali on the Iranian border to visit a religious shrine.
The dead included two women and two children, Col. Sarchal Abdul-Karim said.
Also Tuesday, a bomb planted in a parked car blew up in the city of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.
A police official initially said four people were killed. However, another police official later said he only received word of wounded, and security officials at a local hospital said they knew of 12 people injured in the blast.
Tikrit was the late Saddam Hussein's hometown and had been a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency since the 2003 ouster of the Iraqi leader.
But it has enjoyed relative quiet since violence significantly dropped over the past year in much of Iraq.
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