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.
