Suicide bomber kills 50 in Iraq

Almost 50 people were killed Wednesday as a suicide bomber struck an Iraqi police recruitment centre in the Kurdish city of Arbil, a day after Iraq's first democratic cabinet was sworn in. In a separate attack in Baghdad, a car bomb killed nine Iraqi soldiers and injured 17 people in the southern district of Dura, an interior ministry official said. Since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari first unveiled a partial cabinet line-up on April 28, insurgents have stepped up attacks and bombings, leaving more than 200 people dead, both civilians and members of security forces. In Arbil, an unidentified bomber mingled with a crowd of men waiting to enlist in the police before setting off his explosives belt next to an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), officials and witnesses said.
Local KDP officials and police said 46 people died and 71 others were wounded. The US military in a statement put the toll at 60 but there was no confirmation of a rising number of casualties.
The al Qaeda linked group Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for what it called the suicide car bombing in the northern Iraqi city, in a message posted on an Islamist website.
Rain puddles turned red with blood in the street outside the centre, and ambulances and private cars rushed to ferry the injured to hospitals and evacuate the dead.
A doctor from Ruz Gari hospital, Arbil's largest, stepped out in front of a crowd clamouring for news of friends and relatives to read the names of 39 victims - all of them police recruits.
Six bodies, he said, had not yet been identified. At least one of the wounded later died at the hospital.
The attack in Arbil came three days after a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden ambulance into a tent set up for the funeral of a KDP official in the northern town of Tall Afar, killing 25 and wounding scores.
Wednesday's bombing was one of the deadliest since anti-Shiite attacks left more than 100 dead in the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, in February. A month later, 51 people were killed in an attack in the northern city of Mosul.
The Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars, which has ties to the Sunni Arab-based insurgency, condemned the attack, while neighbouring Turkey offered help in treating the wounded.
The grisly attack came a day after the swearing-in of Prime Minister Jaafari's cabinet, Iraq's first democratically elected government in half a century.