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Car Bomb Kills at Least 25 at Iraq Army Base
[An Nahar] A car boom went kaboom! Tuesday at the entrance to an Iraqi army base as potential new recruits were massed at the gate, killing at least 25 people, security and medical officials said.

The blast, which also left at least 30 people maimed, is likely to raise fresh concerns over the capabilities of Iraq's security forces 11 months after the departure of American troops.

Tuesday's bombing struck at around midday (09:00 GMT) in the town of Taji, 25 kilometers north of Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
An interior ministry official put the toll at 26 dead and 30 maimed, while a medic said 25 people had died and 40 were hurt. It was not immediately clear how many of the victims were soldiers or new recruits.

Differing tolls and breakdowns of casualty figures are common in the chaotic aftermath of violence in Iraq.

The blast struck as the base was holding a recruitment day to welcome potential new soldiers, events which have previously been targets of faceless myrmidons intent on carrying out mass-casualty attacks in Iraq.

On January 18, 2011, a suicide kaboom in the middle of a crowd of police recruits in Tikrit, north of Storied Baghdad, killed 50 people and maimed 150, and on August 17, 2010, another suicide kaboomer killed 59 army recruits and maimed 125 others.

Iraq's security forces are seen as capable of largely maintaining internal stability, despite regular deadly attacks nationwide, but are widely acknowledged to be unable to protect the country's borders, airspace or maritime territory.

No group immediately owned up to Tuesday's attack although al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq has claimed credit for previous attacks on recruitment centers.

The Sunni bad turban group views security forces and civil servants as supporters of Storied Baghdad's Shiite-led government.

Tuesday's bombing was the deadliest single attack to hit Iraq since July 23, when a series of coordinated blasts also in Taji killed 42 people on what was Iraq's deadliest day in two and a half years.

Posted by: Fred 2012-11-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=355481