A suicide bomber killed 20 people waiting outside a police recruiting center in Baghdad on Saturday, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. According to The AP, the attacker wore an explosive-laden belt and blew himself up outside the recruiting center in west Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood, said police Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman. Most of those killed were recruits, he said.
The explosion took was reported at at about 9:00 a.m., said police Lt. Majid Zaki. Yarmouk Hospital received at least 17 bodies and treated 21 wounded, Dr. Muhanad Jawad conveyed.
Heavily-armed police arrived at the scene in white pickup trucks, firing warning shots in the air to clear the area. Emergency workers carted bodies away on stretchers.
Another car bomb near a bank in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, left one killed and three wounded, said an interior ministry source.
A number of other attacks against Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad from Duluiyah to the northern refinery town of Baiji killed at least 13 people, six of them civilians, according to security forces. According to AFP, the Medical City hospital in Mosul said it received 12 unidentified bodies in the past 24 hours, most of them shot in the head.
On his part, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said on Saturday Iraqis were fighting terror on behalf of humanity. "Iraqis are battling terror on behalf of the whole world," Jaafari told reporters after talks with members of his Shiite parliamentary bloc. "The Iraqi nation is giving its dearest and its blood to defend humanity."
