BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber with explosives hidden beneath his traditional robe blew himself up Tuesday in a crowd of Iraqis trying to join the police force, killing at least 25 people in the second major bombing in Iraq this week.
The attack occurred in Jalula, a remote, impoverished community about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad that lies in Diyala province, where a U.S.-Iraqi offensive is being waged against the last major insurgent stronghold near the capital.
The bomber mingled in the crowd of would-be police recruits and then detonated explosives hidden beneath his robe, police said. The bomb was packed with nails and ball bearings to maximize casualties, police said.
Initial reports from police and the U.S. military said the bomber blew up an explosives- laden vehicle near the crowd, but authorities said later that officers first concluded erroneously that a parked car damaged by the blast had been used as a car bomb.
U.S. military officials said five policemen were among the dead.
Police guard Falah Hassan, 28, said he was standing at the gate of the Jalula police compound when he heard a thunderous explosion about 100 yards away and was hit by debris.
“I saw burned bodies, wounded people and small pools of blood,” said Hassan, speaking from a hospital bed in Sulaimaniyah, where some of the 40 wounded were taken.
The local police chief, Col. Ahmed Mahmoud Khalifa, said jobs in the police force are prized in Jalula, a mostly Sunni Arab town of 67,000 people with a substantial Kurdish population, because unemployment is high.
He said tribal sheiks had been asked to send recruits for a new police emergency response unit, and applicants came to the police center Tuesday to check whether they had been accepted.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are the hallmark of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni Islamist extremists that operate in Diyala, one of the most violent areas in the country.
