Baghdad, Iraq – A suicide bomber wrapped with explosives attacked a police recruiting center in Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 16 other people gathered outside the gate. A Web statement claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Iraq since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-led government on April 28.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, promised a full investigation into allegations by Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations that U.S. Marines killed his young cousin during operations against insurgents in western Anbar province.
The attack on the recruiting center occurred about 9 a.m. in western Baghdad’s Yarmouk district, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
Yarmouk Hospital said the dead included 11 police recruits and six other people, presumably including the bomber. The hospital said 22 others were wounded.
Iraqi police fired warning shots in the air to clear the area as emergency workers carted away bodies on stretchers.
A posting on an Islamic website claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement’s authenticity could not be confirmed.
In other violence Saturday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing northeast of Baghdad, their commander said. Gunmen also assassinated a police lieutenant colonel in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.
Two other people were killed when a bomb hidden in a vegetable cart exploded Saturday in Mahmudiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
The blast occurred a few minutes after mourners passed by with the body of an aide to Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. The aide was slain Friday outside a Baghdad mosque. It was unclear if the bomb had been intended for the mourners, who were carrying the body through the town en route to burial in the Shiite city of Najaf.
Also Saturday, a policeman and a female relative traveling with him in a civilian car were killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, authorities said.
A bomb exploded Saturday in a parked car near a police station in the New Baghdad section of the capital, wounding nine people, including two policemen, officials said.
