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TIKRIT: A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of police recruits in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Tuesday, killing 50 people in the bloodiest attack in more than two months.
The blast, which also wounded 150, was the first major strike in Iraq since the formation of a new government on December 21 and recalled an August attack against an army recruitment centre in Baghdad that also killed dozens.
“I have been trying for hours to call my brother, he was in the queue to join the police but his phone is off,” said Mohammed Aiseh, who was standing at a checkpoint set up to bar family members from entering the city's hospital, which was already filled with victims.
“I don't even know if he is dead or wounded,” the 38-year-old said, sobbing.
An AFP journalist said the bomb site in the middle of Tikrit, the former hometown of now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein, 160 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital, was covered in torn off flesh and pools of blood, with pieces of clothing and shoes scattered across the scene.
Policemen and soldiers had cordoned off the blast site and several ambulances were rushing wounded people to a nearby hospital.
“Fifty people were killed and 150 wounded by a suicide bomber at a police recruitment centre in Tikrit,” an interior ministry official said in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A police officer in Tikrit said the majority of those killed were potential recruits.
Salaheddin provincial council, which held an emergency session following the blast, called on central government authorities in Baghdad to recognise the dead as members of the police, so that their families would be awarded higher levels of compensation.
It also declared three days of mourning and said all the wounded would be allowed to join the police.
The interior ministry official said that some of the wounded would be transferred to facilities as far away as Baghdad and the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul because Tikrit's main hospital was not able to cope.
“The number of wounded is too high,” said provincial police chief General Raad al-Juburi. “We have transferred many of them outside of Tikrit.”Mosques in Tikrit were, meanwhile, using loudspeakers to broadcast calls for people in the city to donate blood to hospitals.
Witnesses, who declined to be identified, said the recruits had been queuing to enter the centre since 6:00 am, with the attacker detonating his payload at the entrance to the site at around 10715 GMT.
