Bombings Across Iraq Kill at Least 39

08/30/2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Bombing attacks across Iraq targeting a market, an army recruiting center and a police patrol killed at least 39 people and wounded dozens Wednesday, police said.

At least 24 people were killed when a roadside bomb went off at Baghdad’s largest and oldest wholesale market district, said police Lts. Mohammed Khayoun and Bilal Ali Majid.

The Shurja commercial center, with its maze of streets and stalls, is usually teeming with vendors selling everything from satellite dishes to spices.

Thirty-five people were wounded in the attack.

In central Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, a man posing as a potential army recruit detonated an explosives-rigged bicycle outside an army recruiting center, killing 12 people and wounding 28, said police Lt. Osama Ahmed.

Hillah was the site of one of the worst bomb attacks in Iraq, when a suicide car bomber in February 2005 killed 125 national guard and police recruits who were lined up to take physical tests.

In another incident in 2005, a bomb explosion killed 60 civilians who were lining up to apply for police jobs in the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq.

Insurgents have often targeted Iraqi army and police volunteers as they line up outside recruiting stations as a way to discourage people from joining the security services and keep the military and police weak.

In Wednesday’s other attack, three police officers were killed and 14 people were injured when twin bombs - including one planted in a car - struck a police patrol as it drove by a line of vehicles waiting in a line for gas at a filling station in downtown Baghdad.