A suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded army recruitment center in Baghdad killing 59 people yesterday, officials said, as violence coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan raged across Iraq.
The attack, the deadliest this year, wounded at least 100 people and came a day after Iraq’s two main political parties suspended talks over the formation of a new government and as the US withdraws thousands of its soldiers from the country.
“We have received 59 corpses this morning,” an official at a Baghdad morgue said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A doctor at Medical City hospital, close to the scene of the attack, said the hospital had so far received 125 wounded.
The bomber blew himself up around 7:30am at the center, a former Ministry of Defense building that now houses a local security command, in the Baab al-Muatham neighborhood of central Baghdad.
An Interior Ministry official said the majority of the victims were prospective soldiers seeking to enlist on the penultimate day of a week-long recruitment drive but that some troops who were protecting the compound were also among the casualties.
“After the explosion, everyone ran away, and the soldiers fired into the air,” said 19-year-old Ahmed Kadhim, one of the recruits at the center who escaped unharmed.
“I saw dozens of people lying on the ground, some of them were on fire. Others were running with blood pouring out,” he said.
Kadhim said the recruits, who had to pass two searches to enter the recruitment center compound, had been divided into groups based on their educational qualifications, with the suicide bomber targeting the selection of high school graduates.
Iraqi security forces cordoned off the area following the attack, and security was stepped up across the capital, leading to traffic gridlock during the morning rush hour.
A shop owner in the area, who did not want to be named, blamed negligence on the part of army officers for the attack.
“This is the fault of the officers responsible for securing the area — they let these recruits gather outside the center without any protection,” he said.
Also yesterday, two separate bomb attacks against judges in Baghdad and the central city of Baqubah left four of them wounded, security officials said.
The recruitment center explosion was the bloodiest single attack in Iraq since Dec. 8, when a series of coordinated blasts in the capital killed 127 people, and recalls a spate of suicide bombings against army recruitment posts in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq’s insurgency was at its peak.
Violence has surged in the past two months in Iraq, with 200 people already killed this month alone and Iraqi government figures saying that 535 people died last month — the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008. The US military disputes last month’s figure, saying 222 people died violently.
The latest bloodletting, which also coincides with Ramadan, which began on Aug. 11, has sparked concern that local forces are not prepared to handle the country’s security on their own.
US commanders, however, insist, that Iraqi soldiers are up to the job as they pull out thousands of their forces ahead of a declaration to an end to combat operations at the end of this month.
Iraq’s top military officer has raised doubt about his soldiers’ readiness when the last US troops depart as scheduled at the end of next year. US forces would need to stay until 2020, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari said earlier this month.
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