A suicide car bomber killed 35 people at an Iraqi military base in Baghdad yesterday as guerrillas intensified a bloody campaign to sabotage plans for US-led occupation to give way to Iraqi rule on June 30.
The blast outside an army recruiting center on a busy road also wounded 138 people, Iraq's health minister said.
Colonel Mike Murray of the US 1st Cavalry Division said the bomber had blown up a white four-wheel-drive vehicle at the center near Muthanna airport, where US troops are based.
Murray said about 175 army recruits inside the base were unhurt. Passersby took the brunt of the blast.
One man lay dead in a battered white car after the explosion as Iraqi soldiers, rescuers and locals milled about in confusion. Another bloodied body lay on the road.
It was the latest attack in a lethal drive by guerrillas determined to undermine Iraq's new interim government ahead of the transfer of power.
"This was a cowardly attack. It is a demonstration again that these attacks are aimed at the stability of Iraq and the Iraqi people," said Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
The insurgents, thought to include Baathists loyal to former president Saddam Hussein, Iraqi nationalists and foreign militants, have targeted Iraq's oil industry, government officials and security forces in the run-up to the handover.
Oil exports, Iraq's economic lifeblood, remained paralyzed yesterday, and engineers said oil wells were being shut down while pipelines blown up in the south and north were repaired.
US President George W. Bush, whose administration is under fire for its Iraq policies, said yesterday the US was "bringing back a 5,000-year-old civilization" in Iraq.
But retired US diplomats and military officers said he had led the US into an ill-planned war that had weakened US security, directly challenging one of Bush's main arguments for re-election in November.
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