- ISKANDARIYA, Iraq (AFP) --
At least 50 people were killed and 60 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated
a pick-up truck packed with explosives outside a police station south of
Baghdad crowded with civilians, Iraqi police and US military officers said.
-
-
- "I believe it was a suicide bombing," Colonel
Doug Mubari of the US 82nd Airborne Division told AFP at the scene of the
blast in Iskandariya, 45 kilometres (30 miles) from Baghdad.
-
- Iskandariya hospital chief Razzak Jabar Janabi told AFP
he had received 50 dead and 30 injured from the blast, while 31 casualties
were transferred to a facility in the provincial capital Hilla, south of
here.
-
- "Families have already reclaimed 30 bodies and there
are still 20 in the morgue," he said.
-
- Dr Wissam Abbas said an 11-year-old boy was among the
dead and a 15-year old boy among the injured. All the other victims were
adult men.
-
- "All the dead are civilians. Three policemen are
among the wounded, there were no women among the victims," he said.
-
- Police Lieutenant Hussein Sami said the explosion occurred
as hundreds of civilians had flocked to the station to fill in applications
to join the police force. Others confirmed his account.
-
- "I went to the police station asking for work. I
was at the entrance; I was lifted off the ground and thrown two meters
(yards) away .... It was a big explosion," said Dawd Mohammed Ali,
22.
-
- He said he remained conscious and was treated by an American
soldier on the spot for light wounds to his leg and the arm before being
taken to hospital.
-
- Salam Malek, a 25-year-old unemployed man, was closer
to the blast and suffered wounds to his back, arms and leg. He said he
lost consciousness after the explosion and was suffering hearing trouble
six hours later.
-
- A woman clad in a black veil was crying as she walked
through a hospital corridor, while a body covered with a blanket lay at
the entrance.
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- Iraqi police officers said the blast occurred at 9:30
am (0630 GMT).
-
- "It was a car bombing, a Toyota pick-up truck with
a large amount of explosives," said Colonel Mubari.
-
- Lieutenant Colonel Salam Trad said many of the wounded
were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad, and some airlifted to a hospital
for Polish troops stationed near here, because Iskandariya's hospital lacked
the capacity.
-
- Trad, commander of the emergency police in Hilla province,
which covers Iskandariya, said the death toll was expected to rise because
there were "many in serious or critical condition."
-
- An AFP photographer saw a large crater approximately
25 metres (yards) from the police station, damage to the facade of the
one-storey building, and some 15 cars wrecked by the blast.
-
- The police station stands on the main road to Baghdad.
US troops sealed off the area with Humvee all-terrain vehicles.
-
- "One of the messages I want to convey is that the
people who did that, I don't know who, are attacking innocent people. The
target was not the police," Mubari said.
-
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of Agence France Presse.
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