Car Bomb Blasts Baghdad Police Headquarters

A thunderous car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of Iraq’s U.S.-trained police Tuesday, wrecking the office of the top commander and panicking Iraqis who want to take charge of their security but fear doing so is an enormous risk.

One officer was reported killed in the midmorning blast, which sent huge clouds of black smoke over the capital, and 25 other people were injured.

It was the fourth deadly bombing in 27 days, the latest attack to undermine U.S. efforts to restore stability to the increasingly violent, chaotic country that American-led forces invaded more than five months ago but have been unable to pacify.

Maj. Inaam Thabet Nuaman was standing in the police chief’s office when the bomb punched through the windows, hurling shattered glass and hot metal. “The next thing I knew I found myself in the hospital,” said Nuaman, his upper torso swathed in blood-stained bandages.

His boss, U.S.-appointed acting Police Chief Hassan Obeidi, happened not to be in the building at the time of the blast, a rarity. “He’s always there,” Nuaman said.

The office was all but demolished, the major said.

Those circumstances led many Iraqis to suspect that the target was Obeidi, who has been highly visible with the U.S. official overseeing the remake of the Iraqi police force, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. In the Aug. 19 attack on the United Nations headquarters here, the car bomb was placed in a position that killed the mission chief, veteran diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello.

The human and physical toll of Tuesday’s blast paled in comparison with the last three attacks, the worst among them Friday’s bombing outside the Imam Ali Mosque in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, where more than 100 people were killed.

But the symbolism was unmistakable: The bombers hit at Iraqis who are collaborating with the American occupation force in precisely the area of most urgent concern to Iraqis: security.

Damage was minimized in part by a brick wall separating the main offices of the headquarters from the parking lot where the explosives-laden vehicle apparently was left. It was unclear how the vehicle could have been parked in what supposedly would be a protected lot, but several Iraqi employees of the police administration said security was lax. There were rumors that the culprit might have had police ID, either fake or real.

In Al Kindi Hospital where the most seriously hurt were taken, police officers milled about the grimy corridors, one carrying the bloodied blue uniform shirt of his felled colleague. They spoke of the paradoxical dilemma facing their ranks: We want to take charge of security, they said, but we are woefully unprepared for the task.

“We are a small number of Iraqi police. We are not enough to secure anything,” said Ziad Naji, a civilian employee with the police who was wounded in the attack.

He and others complained that the U.S. Army turned security of the police headquarters over to Iraqi forces three weeks ago -- relinquishing two checkpoints on the street leading to the building -- but failed to supply the weapons and equipment necessary to guard it.

“The American MPs were there for three months, and nothing happened. Once we took charge, this happened,” said Naji, his right hand wrapped in gauze. “We have no weapons, not enough people, no communications [equipment], no cars, no uniforms.

“We are human shields for the Americans: them in the back, us out front.”

U.S. officials dismissed the criticism. L. Paul Bremer III, who runs the occupation authority here, said building a new police force takes time. Occupation authorities have deployed nearly 40,000 Iraqi police nationwide, Bremer said, and they hope to have a total of 65,000 to 70,000 police trained by the end of next year.

“You can’t get much faster than that and still have trained and responsible policemen,” he said.

Bremer added that tens of thousands of weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, along with uniforms including flak vests, are on order to better outfit the police.

“I completely agree with the argument that we should find ways quickly to give Iraq and Iraqis more responsibility for security, and indeed that is exactly what we are doing,” he said at a news conference.

The Iraqi definition of “taking charge of security” often means the revival of ad hoc militias loyal to one political or religious faction or another, as seen in the last couple of days during the long funeral procession of slain Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim.

Bremer said occupation authorities have to devolve power in a way that does not allow the proliferation of rival militias.

Tuesday’s bombing at Baghdad’s main police station destroyed a dozen cars and damaged the building and a jail. The complex sits across the street from the police academy where U.S. advisors are training new cadets. No Americans were reported hurt.

Police Col. Ismail Hussein, who was in charge of keeping track of the casualties, had a list of 26 victims. Most had relatively minor wounds. One officer died, and all but two of the rest were released from the hospital by the afternoon.

At the cordoned-off site of the attack, Iraqis who gathered for a glimpse said this would make everyone think twice about working with the Americans.

“I ask you for heaven’s sake,” said Ahmed Mohsen, 35, “if this can happen inside the house of the police, what about the house of ordinary people?”

Mohsen was at police headquarters Tuesday morning before the explosion to apply for a job on the force. Despite what happened, he said he intended to press ahead with his application; he needs the salary, he said, to support his wife and six children.

A couple of hours after the blast, Lt. Col. Yaheya Ibrahim was escorted from the premises. His uniform was covered in blood, his head wrapped in bandages and his ears filled with cotton.

Ibrahim said he and his colleagues were filling out paperwork when their office was blown apart. He said the bomber had attacked “all Iraqi police” who are working “not for the Americans but for the Iraqis.”

He stepped into his car, heavily damaged in the blast. Its windshield was a spider web of cracks, with a huge hole punched in the center. Soot covered the hood. He drove away, saying he wanted to go home.

In other violence, the U.S. military said Tuesday that two soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Battalion of the 220th Military Police Brigade were killed Monday when a bomb went off beside their convoy in southern Iraq; another soldier was wounded.

Also Tuesday, a Black Hawk UH-60 helicopter crashed south of Baghdad, killing one U.S. soldier and injuring another, Associated Press reported.

The deaths raised to 286 the number of American troops killed in the Iraq war. Of those, 148 have died since President Bush declared an end to major fighting May 1. Seventy soldiers have died in combat since Bush’s declaration.

Through Tuesday, 1,141 U.S. troops had been wounded in action.

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Times staff writer Carol J. Williams contributed to this report.