Bomb detonates outside school

Dozens of schoolgirls were injured and at least one of their classmates killed Monday when a powerful truck bomb targeting a police compound in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk sprayed flaming shrapnel onto the grounds of their primary school just as classes were letting out.

At least 12 people died and more than 130 were hurt in the bombing, the latest in a series of attacks on provincial cities and towns amid an intensive security crackdown in the Iraqi capital.

This one, however, targeted a predominantly Kurdish area, in contrast to a series of bombs last week aimed primarily at Shiite Muslim districts and towns, which killed hundreds.

The attack came amid angry debate over a government plan to relocate Arab residents who settled in Kirkuk as part of a campaign by Saddam Hussein to dilute the strength of its dominant ethnic group, the Kurds. Now Kurds want the oil-rich northern city to become part of their autonomous region just to the north, but Sunni Arabs and others have raised objections.

Elsewhere in Iraq, bombings and other attacks killed at least 11 people and injured scores of others. Several of the strikes, including two deadly car bombings, took place in Baghdad, the focus of a U.S. troop buildup aimed at stemming surging sectarian violence.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of three soldiers in separate incidents Monday. At least 3,256 service members have died since the start of the war, according to icasualties.org.

Also, Britain’s Ministry of Defense announced the death from small-arms fire of a British soldier Monday in the city of Basra.

The military also reported the deaths of six soldiers in roadside attacks over the weekend.

In a grisly discovery, Iraqi authorities found the bound and bullet-riddled bodies of 19 men abducted a day earlier at a false checkpoint set up by insurgents near the town of Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad.

Also Monday, prosecutors in the trial of six former senior officials in Hussein’s government demanded the death penalty for Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan Majid, also known as “Chemical Ali” for his alleged role in gas attacks against ethnic Kurds.

Hussein was hanged Dec. 30 after being convicted of crimes against humanity in a separate case, and many Kurds felt cheated of a chance to force the former leader to answer to the crime of genocide. As many as 100,000 ethnic Kurds were killed in the 1980s government campaign.

The trial was adjourned until April 16, when the defense is to make its closing arguments.

The truck bombing in Kirkuk took place in the neighborhood of Rahim Awa, just outside a police compound that houses a special criminal investigations unit -- and abuts the primary school. Ten-year-old Sarwa Tahseen, who was slightly wounded, described a deafening explosion as she left her classroom.

“The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, with my injured classmates all around me,” she said.

About 50 of the 137 people hurt in the blast were pupils from the girls school, several of whom were critically injured, hospital officials said. Passersby helped rush injured children to the hospital.

“When [police] realized we wanted to help the victims and saw the horrible situation, they let us through,” said 50-year-old Rizgar Ahmed, a government worker.

“I took four or five children to the hospital in my car.”

“I carried one child to an ambulance -- my clothing is still covered in her blood,” said Kamiran Shwani, who has a shop near the blast site.

Police said the bombers hid the explosives under bags of flour, borrowing a tactic used in a devastating double truck bombing last week in the town of Tall Afar -- the worst single attack of the war, by Iraqi government reckoning, with 152 dead.

The seemingly harmless cargo probably enabled the truck to pass swiftly through checkpoints.

Iraqi officials said the principal target in the Kirkuk blast might have been American troops who were visiting the police compound. However, nearly all the casualties were incurred outside the compound -- the truck exploded when the suicide driver rammed it into blast barriers surrounding the facility.

The number of injuries, and their severity, quickly overwhelmed local hospitals and clinics. Frantic doctors put out calls for blood donations.

In a grim statistic that has become a measure of sectarian violence in Baghdad, the bodies of 14 men were delivered to the morgue Monday after being found dumped in various parts of the city. A daily drumbeat of such execution-style killings, nearly all of them sectarian, helped prompt the ongoing security crackdown in Baghdad.

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king@latimes.com

Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Saif Hameed and Wail Alhafith in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Kirkuk contributed to this report.