BAGHDAD, 7 December 2005 - Two suicide bombers struck at Baghdad’s police academy yesterday, killing at least 36 officers and cadets and wounding more than 50, officials said.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the bloodiest attack in three weeks, saying in an Internet statement that “two brothers” had carried out the attack on a police force it said was persecuting the Sunni Arab minority. The Shiite-led government, facing an election next week amid daily violence, denies such accusations.
One American contractor was wounded but no US troops were hurt, said the US military, which put the casualty toll at 27 dead and 50 wounded. The military initially blamed the attack on two female bombers, but later said they were male.
An Interior Ministry official said 36 were killed and 72 injured, while one police officer said 37 died and 76 were hurt. The first explosion occurred at 12:45 p.m. (0945 GMT) as police cadets were going to lunch after shooting practice, said Nizal Mahmoud Khalaf, a police trainee who survived the blasts. The second bomber struck as the cadets ran for shelter, he said outside a hospital where the wounded were treated.
The US military, which initially said the bombers walked into a classroom and blew themselves up, later said one of the bombers struck near a group of students outside a classroom.
Thinking the explosion was an attack from outside, Iraqi police officers and students ran for shelter to a bunker - where the second bomber detonated his vest strapped with explosives, the military said.
The attack on the academy in eastern Baghdad was the worst of its kind since two suicide bombers killed at least 74 people and reduced two crowded Shiite mosques to rubble during Friday prayers in the northeast Iraqi town of Khanaqin on Nov. 18.
Violence in Iraq has escalated ahead of next Thursday’s parliamentary elections. Like the violence, hostage-taking too was on the rise with an Iraqi militant group kidnapping a US security consultant and threatening to kill him in 48 hours unless Washington frees all Iraqi prisoners, according to a video aired by Al Jazeera television yesterday.
The man is the seventh Westerner taken hostage by Iraqi gunmen in just over 10 days after a lull in such abductions in recent months following tight security measures by most Westerners. The grainy video, featuring the logo of the Islamic Army in Iraq, showed a blond, Western-looking man sitting down with his hands tied behind his back. It also showed an American passport and an Arabic identity card bearing the name Ronald Schulz.
In Najaf, unknown assailants fired a rocket at the Najaf offices of the party of former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi yesterday, only two days after the man himself was assaulted in the same southern Iraqi town. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attack on the offices of the Iraqi National Accord, according to Hassan Attan, assistant to the city’s governor. “The building’s guards responded and security forces cordoned off the area and went in search of the attackers,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, Iraq’s main Sunni religious authority, announced yesterday it has decided not to participate in this month’s general election but stopped short of calling for a boycott.
“A lot of people ask about the committee’s position on the elections. The committee announces that it will not participate in any political process under the shadow of the occupation,” said spokesman Sheikh Abdel Salam Al-Qubeissi. “The committee is not dreaming of power and does not want to give the occupiers the right to remain in Iraq,” he told a news conference.
