Bomb Kills 13 Iraqis at Recruiting Center

Insurgents attacked aspiring Iraqi security personnel for the second consecutive day Tuesday, killing at least 13 people in an apparent suicide bombing that targeted a line of men outside an army recruiting center.

Some reports said the attack had killed as many as 21 people. However, officials at Yarmouk Hospital, where the dead and injured were taken, said 13 died and 13 were wounded in the strike outside a former Iraqi air base.

The attack, coming a day after bombings in the cities of Mosul and Baqubah, appeared to underscore the insurgents’ determination to press their campaign in the aftermath of the country’s Jan. 30 election, which will lead to a new transitional government. Tight security prevented rebels from thwarting the balloting, although there were many attacks on election day.

“I wouldn’t say anyone was thinking they [the insurgents] had given up,” said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman. “It’s very difficult to predict what they’ll do and when they’ll do it.”

Meanwhile, Iraqi election officials said complete results of the vote should be released this week. A Shiite Muslim slate of candidates is expected to win a majority of seats in a 275-member national assembly, which will form a transitional government and write a permanent constitution.

Elsewhere in the capital Tuesday, gunmen tried to assassinate a politician who had caused a stir when he visited Israel last year and called for normalization of relations with the Jewish state. The politician survived, but the hail of gunfire killed his two sons and a bodyguard.

“I was the target of the attack, there is no doubt,” Mithal Alusi, secretary-general of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, was quoted as telling an Arabic-language network.

After the attack, a shaken Alusi was seen on television receiving an embrace of condolence from an American soldier. The U.S. military presence here is controversial, and it is unusual for Iraqi politicians to be photographed with the troops.

Outside the Muthana airfield, where the bombing occurred Tuesday morning, onlookers observed what has becoming a numbingly familiar scene: screeching ambulances rushing to the site and U.S. and Iraqi forces sealing off the area as black smoke rises into the sky.

Several witnesses said the assailant was a lone suicide bomber who had walked into the line of recruits and detonated an explosive device.

“He [the bomber] had a long beard and was carrying a black suitcase with him,” Fouad Hessian, 23, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his head and legs, said from his hospital bed. “I felt that something was strange about this man so I ran away quickly.... I could have been killed.”

It was at least the third time the recruiting center had been attacked. Despite the daily killings of security personnel here, there is no shortage of recruits in a nation where more than half the young men are reportedly unemployed.

Officials have moved lines of would-be police and soldiers farther from sites that have been targets of insurgents, such as fortified bases, but the recruits themselves have remained relatively easy to attack. Many applicants were among the 15 killed Monday when a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle outside the gates of a police station in Baqubah, a restive city northeast of Baghdad.

The insurgents have often deployed lone bombers on foot, outfitted with explosives-laden vests, in addition to the scores of car bombers, whose payloads are much larger.

“We never expected someone to come walking in and blow himself up,” said Jewad Najy, a 27-year-old member of the Iraqi national guard who was injured Tuesday. “This happened before the checkpoint, before anyone could search him.”

Insurgents have denounced Iraqi police and military personnel as U.S. pawns and collaborators, and they have killed more than 1,300 of them, according to U.S. estimates. It is unclear whether that number includes the many recruits killed before they could even join the forces.

Among those injured Tuesday was Raid Mohammed, 20, of Karbala, who said he had been coming to the center for a month to complete his application process. Mohammed said he had arrived at 7 a.m. and waited outside the gates of the base until about 10:30, when the explosion occurred.

“It was a very long line, and many of us were waiting for a long time,” Mohammed said from his hospital bed, where he was in great pain from a wound to his right cheek and other injuries. “I was about to finish my application today. I never expected to be lying here in the hospital.”

Special correspondents Caesar Ahmed and Said Rifai contributed to this report.