Suicide Attack Kills 30 in Northern Iraq

For the second day in a row, a suicide bomber Wednesday struck the northern Iraqi town of Tall Afar, killing at least 30 people.

The attacker walked up to a line of police recruits at a checkpoint outside Qalaa Camp on the southern outskirts of the city and detonated a belt of explosives.

U.S. soldiers sought to ease the strain on the local hospital by airlifting some of the estimated 35 injured people to a military facility.

On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber struck at a crowded market in town, killing 30 people and wounding 45.

“Catastrophic events attract attention,” said Maj. Barry McDowell, the liaison officer for the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is stationed in Tall Afar. Insurgents “want to give the perception that the area is still unstable and that the security forces are inadequate,” he said.

At least 275 people have died across the country in the last two weeks as violence has escalated ahead of a national referendum Saturday on Iraq’s proposed constitution.

U.S. officials were trying to persuade the mayor and police chief of Tall Afar to appear on local television to encourage participation in the referendum despite the violence.

“Those operations are aimed at aborting the political process and depriving people from their rights,” said Kasho Goran, the deputy governor of Nineveh province, where Tall Afar is located.

“We’re concerned about it because we don’t want them to intimidate the population,” McDowell said. “It’s traumatic for any community, but I don’t think it will have a lot of influence” on the referendum.

The attacks highlight the difficulties U.S.-led troops face in dealing with the threat of suicide bombers. Cordoning off the city, setting up checkpoints, building blast walls and conducting searches can help limit casualties but not avert attacks, McDowell said.

Wednesday’s attack on Tall Afar took place just hours before police began enforcing a national curfew ahead of the referendum.

American and Iraqi forces conducted a major anti-insurgent operation in the city last month, and commanders said Tall Afar was under the control of Iraqi troops. President Bush used the town near the Syrian border as an example of the growing competence of Iraqi security forces.

At least 160 suspected insurgents were killed and 700 others captured in the weeks-long offensive.

The operation was hailed as a tactical success, McDowell said, but a number of insurgents managed to leave the city before the final strike.

“We spent a long time in there, doing the best we could to clean up the city,” McDowell said. But, he added, “what was supposed to be the big attack was very anticlimactic; there was hardly any fighting.”

After operations ended mid-September, residents began returning to Tall Afar and reconstruction projects were underway. A program was imple mented to recruit and train more than 1,000 police officers.

“All of them were innocent recruits,” said Capt. Raad Mohammed of the Iraqi army’s 3rd Division, referring to Wednesday’s victims.

About 5,000 Iraqi and American troops are deployed in and around the city.

A Times special correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report.