Suicide Bomber Kills Iraqi Army Recruits

At least 40 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded Monday in a suicide bombing at an Iraqi army recruiting office near the gate of a U.S.-Iraq military base about 20 miles east of Tall Afar in northern Iraq, Iraqi officials said.

The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, struck shortly after noon not far from the Syrian border, the Defense Ministry said. The center is in front of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military base between the ancient city of Tall Afar and Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city.

Last week, in a series of speeches marking the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Bush cited Tall Afar as an example of success in Iraq, calling it “a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq.” The city had been the site of major fighting last fall, when thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops entered to battle insurgents. As a result of the joint attack, the insurgents there had been “marginalized,” Bush said.

Monday’s attack killed civilians and Iraqi military personnel who had gathered among a crowd of recruits, the Defense Ministry said. The U.S. military said no American troops were injured in the bombing, and it reported 30 dead.

Iraqi army Lt. Akram Eid told the Associated Press that many of the injured were taken to the Sykes U.S. Army base on the outskirts of Tall Afar. U.S. troops helped secure the area after the attack and treat the wounded, the U.S. military said.

Elsewhere in Iraq on Monday, 29 more bodies were found, nine with nooses around their necks.

In the day’s largest single attack aside from the suicide bombing, a rocket hit a building in southeast Baghdad that housed the headquarters of the Shiite Al Fadila al Islamiya party, killing seven people and wounding at least 35, including children, police Capt. Ali Mahdi said.

Later, gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of an Iraqi company, an Interior Ministry official said. Gunmen kidnapped Anbar University chief Abdul Hadi Rajab Hitawi, a relative said.