Suicide bomber kills 28 in Iraq
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked recruits waiting outside a police station Tuesday in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, killing 28 people and wounding 45 others, according to witnesses and Interior Ministry officials.
The bomber walked up to the line of recruits in the province’s mainly Arab district of Jalula, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, and set off his explosives. The attack was similar to attacks by radical Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaida in Iraq.
The Iraqi security forces and U. S. military have been conducting a monthlong offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq in Diyala, which is marked by tense relations among Sunni Arabs, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. Diyala Gov. Raad Rashid Tamimi said militants were trying to create an impression that they remain strong.
Jalula had been under the control of Kurdish fighters, or “peshmerga,” from northern Iraq, but they were replaced this month by an Iraqi army unit. The army also is in the process of taking over from “peshmerga” in the province’s largely Kurdish district of Khanequin.
The attack followed a suicide bombing that killed 25 people Sunday night at a tribal sheik’s banquet in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib.
The attacks in Abu Ghraib and Diyala were a reminder that Sunni militant groups still have the ability to launch attacks despite a dramatic drop in violence in the last year.
A car bomb also exploded in Tikrit, the hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein. The blast killed five civilians and wounded eight in the city center, a security official said.
The Shiite-led government also has initiated a crackdown on leaders and members of the U. S.- funded Sons of Iraq movement, which includes many former Sunni insurgents who allied themselves with American forces in 2007 to fight al- Qaida in Iraq. Since May, Iraqi security forces have started arresting Sunni fighters.
Leaders from the Sons of Iraq have warned that the measures could drive some of their men back to fighting the government.
