BAGHDAD, 30 July 2005 — A suicide bomber detonated explosives among Iraqi Army volunteers near the Syrian border yesterday, killing 25 and wounding 35, Iraqi officials said. Al-Qaeda’s wing in Iraq claimed responsibility.
The attack dealt another blow to renewed American efforts to bring Iraq’s forces up to speed so US and other foreign troops can go home starting next year.
Two more Marines were reported killed in action, bringing to 11 the number of US service members who died in Iraq this week.
The suicide attack occurred in Rabiah, 370 km north of Baghdad, as a crowd of young men gathered outside a municipal building to volunteer for the Iraqi Army, officials and survivors said.
A wounded survivor, Rashid Hamed, said an American soldier asked them to move a short distance away. “Minutes later I saw a portly young man carrying a bag in his hand and heading toward us. I don’t remember anything else but waking up in the hospital,” Hamed said from a hospital bed in Mosul, 100 km to the east.
In an Internet statement, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by terror mastermind Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack.
“One of the lions of a martyrdom brigade of Al-Qaeda in Iraq carried out a heroic operation after he wore an explosive belt and entered a center of the idol-worshipping volunteers,” said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
The attack followed a grisly pattern repeated dozens of times in Iraq — suicide bombers detonating explosives among recruits or piloting vehicles into crowds of volunteers. Measures have been taken to boost security, but Iraqi authorities seem powerless to stop the attacks.
Security around Iraqi installations has taken on new urgency as the United States and its partners seek to accelerate training of Iraqi forces so they can assume greater security responsibilities and enable American and other foreign troops to begin going home next year.
Two Marines were killed by insurgent gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in western Iraq, prompting US jets to drop high-tech bombs that destroyed three buildings used by rebels as firing positions, officials said yesterday.
The Marines reported killing nine insurgents, five of them believed to be Syrians, during Thursday’s engagement in a village west of Haditha, about 270 km west of Baghdad.
The US military said it captured a cell leader of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Ammar Abu Bara, also known as Amar Hussein Hasan, was arrested Wednesday in Mosul by troops of the Army’s 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, a US statement said.
The statement said Abu Bara was taken into custody during a search operation in a neighborhood in northern Mosul. Abu Bara replaced Abu Talha, former terror cell leader for the Mosul area who was arrested last month, the statement added.
