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Suicide bomber kills 50 in Iraq
A SUICIDE bomber blew himself up among a crowd of police recruits in the Iraqi city of Tikrit yesterday, killing 50 people and wounding 150.The blast in the insurgency stronghold was the deadliest since an October 31 siege at a Baghdad church left 53 people dead, and was the first major attack since the formation of a new government on December 21. The bomb site in the middle of Tikrit, the home town of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, 160km north of the Iraqi capital, was covered in pieces of flesh and pools of blood, with clothing and shoes scattered across the scene. Loudspeakers from the city mosques were calling on people to donate blood for the wounded. The recruits, applying for 2000 new jobs that Iraq's Interior Ministry recently approved for Salahuddin province, had been queuing to enter the centre since 6am, with the attacker detonating his payload at the entrance about 10.15am (6.15pm AEDT). The attack starkly displayed the Iraqi forces' failure to plug even the most obvious holes in their security as the US military prepares to withdraw from Iraq at the end of the year. Posted by: tipper 2011-01-18 |
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