At least 120 people were killed in a suicide bombing and clashes on Wednesday as Iraq's interim government marked its first month in office embroiled in deadly violence and a hostage crisis. Up to 68 were killed and dozens wounded in the morning blast in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, that struck as dozens of police recruits queued outside a police post seeking work and a bus passed by laden with passengers.
"The hospital officials have told me that 68 were dead and 56 injured in the Baquba blast," Health Minister Alaadin Alwan told AFP.
A doctor at Baquba hospital put the number of injured as high as 70, adding that emergency workers were continuing to collect bodies from the scene of the explosion.
An AFP correspondent said he saw at least a dozen bodies lined up outside the hospital's morgue, already crammed to capacity with the dead.
Dozens of maimed bodies were strewn outside the police post amid pools of blood mixed into the mud.
Provincial police chief General Walid Khaled Abdel Salam confirmed that a suicide bomber triggered the massive explosion outside the rapid reaction unit building at about 9:30am.
Police officer Mohammed Jassim said the area had been jammed with people at the time of the blast. "Young men were queuing outside to join the police and a bus passed by," he said.
Another officer said 600 police recruits were due to come to the station on Wednesday and Thursday. It was impossible to squeeze all the applicants into the building, so some had to wait outside.
"We tried to force them back, but they wouldn't listen. A car just came by and blew up in their midst."
Nervous police began firing into the air as residents, desperate for news of loved ones, tried to get to the scene.
The Sunni Muslim belt north and west from the capital has seen almost daily attacks and car bombings against symbols of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's caretaker government.
The bombing came three days after US-backed Iraqi security forces and police killed 13 insurgents in a blistering shootout in nearby Buhruz.
Baquba has suffered frequent attacks targeting US-backed Iraqi security forces, some of which have been claimed by al Qaeda's suspected chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
Meanwhile, 35 insurgents and seven Iraqi troops were killed in a joint raid with multinational soldiers south of Baghdad, the US military said.
The region has been largely quiet since the end of an uprising by radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr earlier this year.
West of Falluja, four Iraqi policemen were killed and one was wounded when a homemade bomb targeted a joint US and Iraqi convoy, a local security officer said.
In Baghdad, two people were killed, including a 13-year-old child, when a projectile landed in a central residential district.
In the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, two Iraqis suspected of trying to bomb an oil pipeline were shot dead as a policeman was killed making his way home, police said.
Three sons of the governor of Iraq's restive Al-Anbar province, where many foreign hostages are thought to be hidden, were kidnapped by gunmen who barged into the official's private home in the flashpoint city of Ramadi, police said.
The sons, one of them a teenager, were snatched before gunmen torched the building while Governor Abdul Karim Burghis al-Rawi was at work, police said.
Separately, one insurgent was killed and 11 US troops wounded when their military camp outside the city was attacked, the US military said.
Minutes later, two US aircraft were forced to land after coming under small arms fire, in an incident which left one pilot wounded.
The US military was unable to confirm medical reports that a mother was killed during the clashes, which also wounded her husband and three children.
In Balad Ruz, another trouble spot not far from Baquba, a US soldier was killed and three comrades wounded when their convoy was ambushed late Tuesday.
More than 670 US troops have been killed in combat since the launch of the US-led invasion in March 2003, based on Pentagon figures.
Faced with a persistent hostage crisis, President Ghazi al-Yawar has vowed not to give in to kidnappers, although increasingly foreign governments and companies alike have buckled in order to spare the lives of civilian hostages.
The father of one of two Pakistani hostages held by militants in Iraq urged his captors to "feel the pain of a fellow Muslim" and free him.
"I appeal to them to release my son, because they are also Muslims and a Muslim can feel the pain of a fellow Muslim," said Muhammad Naeem Khan.
The Philippines, one of five countries to quit the US-led multinational force since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, pulled out its 51-man contingent earlier this month to secure the release of civilian Angelo de la Cruz.
On Monday, Jordanian transport firm Daoud and Partners, suppliers to the US military, announced it would also stop work in Iraq to try to save two of its drivers, Ahmed Salameh Hussein, 34, and Fayez Saad al-Adwan, 58.
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