| A suicide attacker detonated explosives packed into a vehicle in front of a police academy in northern Iraq Saturday as scores of recruits were leaving the compound, killing at least 15 policemen and wounding 36 people, the U.S. military said. The blast at the police academy in Kirkuk capped a day of violence across Iraq. In Kirkuk, witnesses and police officials described a tableau of tragedy that has become hauntingly familiar to Iraqis: bodies blown apart, bloodied survivors seeking medial attention and a street littered with mangled cars and broken glass. Twenty-four of those injured were police. A senior police official in the city, Shirku Shakir Hakim, said the suicide bomber had been waiting in a car in front of the academy for a large number of people to leave. When a passerby asked what he was doing, the driver responded that he was there to pick up someone, Hakim said. |