Iraqi Suicide, Car Bombings Kill 30, Wound Dozens

RFE/RL ^ | 01.12.2008 | Staff

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Blasts at Baghdad's police academy and in the northern city of Mosul have killed 30 people and wounded dozens more, hours after a roadside bomb wounded a senior Iraqi official, police said.

Violence has fallen sharply over the last year as successive security crackdowns dealt insurgent groups a heavy blow, but officials say militants are now concentrating their efforts on attention-grabbing attacks ahead of elections next year.

People were queuing at the back entrance of the police academy in east Baghdad to enroll when a car bomb exploded, followed minutes later by a suicide bomb attack, police said. Fifteen people were killed and 45 wounded, they said.

The attacks left a crater near the academy, and wallets containing identification cards required for enrollment lay scattered on the road, Reuters television footage showed.

Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Ata al-Musawi said 11 people were killed. The U.S. military said the suicide attack came first, the bomber's ball-bearing and explosives-packed vest killing six people. The car bomb exploded about 150 meters away, killing no one, the U.S. military said.

Body counts given by Iraqi police and the U.S. military frequently differ.

Shortly after the Baghdad attacks, police said a suicide car bomber and a car bomb killed 15 people and wounded 37 in Mosul, which officials say is the last holdout for Al-Qaeda and other insurgents. They had once controlled swathes of Iraq.

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[Zeddicus]

Obama’s fault.