A suicide car bomber blew himself up Monday in a crowd of police and Iraqi National Guard recruits south of Baghdad, killing at least 106 and wounding 133, police and witnesses said.
AP Television News footage showed huge pools of blood outside the medical clinic, located on a dusty street in Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad. "A suicide car bomb hit a gathering of people who were applying for work in the security services. The incident led to the death of 106 people and injury of 133 citizens," Babil province police said in a statement released to reporters. It added that "several people" were arrested, but did not elaborate.
Dozens of bodies could be seen laying on the ground after the blast, and half a dozen ambulances transferred casualties to a nearby hospital, witnesses said. The huge blast damaged nearby shops and parked cars, and sent panicked people fleeing. "People were queuing up to be checked medically in order to become policemen. A car came ... and exploded, killing more than 50 people, more than what you expect," a witness told APTN.
Meanwhile, a second car bomb exploded Monday at a police checkpoint in Musayyib, located about 20 miles north of Hillah, killing at least one policeman and wounding several others, police said.
In the meantime, a US soldier manning a traffic checkpoint in the Iraqi capital has been shot dead, the military said Monday. The Task Force Baghdad soldier was taken to a "coalition medical facility" but died 40 minutes after he was shot late Sunday night, the military said in a statement.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed four people and injured two in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the U.S. military said late on Sunday. This attack came hours after a bombing near Mosul in Hamam al-Alil killed eight people.
Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria captured and handed over Saddam Hussein's half brother, ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime. According to The AP, Iraq authorities said Damascus acted in a gesture of goodwill.
Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who shared a mother with Saddam, was nabbed along with 29 other fugitive members of the former president's Baath Party in Hasakah in northeastern Syria, some 50 kms from the Iraqi border, the officials said.
