Bombings Kill More Than 100 Iraqis
    By Charles Duhigg
    Los Angeles Times 
    Wednesday 11 February 2004 

    ISKANDARIYA, Iraq - More than 100 Iraqis - many of them men seeking jobs as police or soldiers - were killed within 24 hours in a pair of suicide bombings that devastated a police station here and an army recruitment center in Baghdad. 

    In the first blast, a suicide truck bomb exploded Tuesday morning outside a police station south of Baghdad, killing at least 55 people and injuring more than 50. In the second attack, a suicide car bombing rocked the army recruitment center this morning in Baghdad, killing at least 46 people, and wounding more than 50, officials said. 

    Young men, including some veterans of the disbanded Iraqi army, were lined up to apply for jobs as soldiers. 

    About half an hour before the office opened, a white Oldsmobile approached and blew up. "He drove in and then it exploded," said a recruiting officer who was injured in today's blast. 

    Attacks against Iraqis willing to cooperate with the United States have been mounting. Both of the recent blasts appeared to be carefully targeted suicide strikes against Iraqi volunteers who are gradually taking back responsibility for security from troops with the U.S.-led coalition. The growing presence of Iraqi security forces makes it more difficult for militants to evade detection, coalition spokesmen say. 

    Tuesday's explosion was the third-worst bomb attack in Iraq since President Bush declared the end of major combat in May. 

    More than 190 Iraqis have been killed in the last two weeks in suicide bombings directed at police and political figures. Four more Iraqi police officers were killed Tuesday in Baghdad, authorities said. 

    U.S. officials said they believed the truck that blew up Tuesday contained 500 pounds of explosives. 

    "Bodies were like sticks covering every part of the ground," said Lt. Col. Abdul Raheem Saleh, 48, commander of the Iskandariya police station. 

    The blast came as a team of United Nations experts was visiting Iraq to study the feasibility of holding direct elections in the spring, and a day after the U.S. military confirmed the interception of a letter it says was written by a terrorist operative seeking Al Qaeda's assistance in inciting further violence in Iraq. Military officials say they believe that the letter, seeking to provoke warfare between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, was written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. 

    Recent attacks, ranging from suicide bombings Feb. 1 in the Kurd-dominated north Feb. 1 that killed 109 to Tuesday's bombing in this mixed Shiite and Sunni area - the deadliest attack south of Baghdad since the summer - underscore the wide reach of the insurgent threat and the continued vulnerability of government and political offices. 

    Many of the victims of the Iskandariya blast were young men lined up to apply for jobs as police officers. Police are viewed by the insurgents as collaborators with the U.S.-led occupiers. None of the dead were Americans. 

    Witnesses said two vehicles sped toward the police station surrounded by low sandbag walls about 9 a.m. as the applicants were waiting for the office to open. One of the vehicles, a red truck, suddenly braked and exploded, leaving a 5-foot-square hole in the asphalt and destroying at least a dozen cars. 

    One woman and a child were among those killed, said doctors at the Iskandariya hospital. Doctors said they expected the death toll to rise. 

    "We were lining up, waiting to submit our papers, when I heard an explosion and was thrown through the air," said Thamer Talib Saudi, 22, who lost an ear in the blast. "When I woke up 10 minutes later, the American troops were there, and I was surrounded by dead bodies as far as I could see." 

    Local police in this town of 120,000 said they believed that the attack was the latest attempt by insurgents to undermine plans to transfer sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government by June 30. The U.N. team is assessing the demand of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading cleric of for Iraq's Shiite majority, for swift direct elections rather than the U.S.-backed plan for choosing the transitional government through a caucus system. 

    Successful insurgent assaults on U.S. troops have diminished, but attacks against Iraqi targets have continued steadily. 

    "They want to scare us, but they will never affect our morale," said Saleh, the police commander. 

    Other officers, however, said the tactics might be working. 

    "If the situation continues like this, I will quit working with the police," said an Iraqi officer who refused to give his name. His nephew was injured in the blast. "Iraq has no government now. The police will continue to be killed." 

    About 150,000 Iraqis have been recruited for the nation's new security forces since the fall of President Saddam Hussein. More than 300 of them have been killed in attacks, including four in a bombing Saturday in Suwayrah in which a member of the police staff was implicated. 

    Iraqi police Gen. Ahmed Kadhim Ibrahim said in Baghdad that the serial number of the engine of the truck used in Tuesday's attack indicated it previously belonged to a former military intelligence officer in Hussein's regime. 

    Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said it was too early to assign responsibility for the blast. 

    An Iskandariya religious figure blamed the attack on outsiders. "All Muslims are the same here," said Shiite Sheik Zahid Hasam, whose brother was injured in the bombing. "But there are many new nationalities now in Iraq. They bring hatred to us." 

    Some in the town, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, blamed the blast on the United States. "Not Shiite, not Sunni, this is an American strike," chanted about 150 men surrounding the ruins of the station eight hours after the bombing. 

    Kadhum Shanan stepped over bodies as he searched for his nephew, a father of two who had gone to the police station that morning to seek employment. 

    "I don't know who is responsible," said Shanan, beating his brow in grief as he walked between a blackened torso and a severed head in the dust. "We are all afraid. We just want to live." 

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