Baghdad and Mosul bombings kill 31 (Roundup)

Mar 8, 2009, 15:00 GMT

Baghdad - At least 31 people were killed and 64 were injured in three bombings in Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, police, witnesses, and medics told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

In Sunday's first bombing, Baghdad's deadliest in months, at least 28 people were killed and 54 were injured when a man driving a motorcycle detonated explosives strapped to his body outside a police recruitment centre in Baghdad on Sunday morning.

The attack took place near the Ministry of Oil and Water Resources on the major Baghdad thoroughfare of Palestine Street. Hundreds of men had gathered outside an Iraqi security forces recruitment station looking for work, police said.

The strength of the blast, which was audible across eastern Baghdad, scattered body parts over a wide area, police and witnesses said.

Witnesses said they heard shots fired after the explosion and saw helicopters and ambulances rushing to the scene.

The recruitment centre had been attacked before. In December 2008, twin bombings left 15 people dead outside the building. And in 2005, two women killed themselves and 40 others when they detonated explosives strapped to their body near the station.

Later on Sunday, a car bomb exploded in Mosul, killing three Iraqi soldiers and injuring three others as they patrolled Mosul's western Hay al-Sokkar neighbourhood, a source in the Mosul police force's operations room told dpa.

A second car bomb targeting a police patrol in Mosul's al-Islah al-Zarai district injured five officers and two civilians, Mosul police said. No one was killed in that attack.

Sunday's attacks were the latest in a recent spike in violence across the country. On Thursday, a car bomb south of Hilla, the capital of the central Iraqi province of Babil, killed at least 10 people and wounded 60.

That bombing was quickly followed by a spate of attacks near Mosul, where Iraqi security forces three weeks ago launched a push to pacify the province, dubbed 'Operation New Hope.'

Despite the rise in violence, US Military spokesman General David Perkins on Sunday told Baghdad's al-Iraqia news channel that the US military was on track to withdraw its combat troops from Iraq by 2011.

'We have seen a significant reduction in violence in Iraq,' he told al-Iraqia. 'Last year, we were seeing 108 attacks a day, but now we have 10 or fewer attacks.'

Perkins said the US military was working with its Iraqi counterpart to smooth the handover of US bases in Iraq, including the 'Green Zone' in central Baghdad, to Iraqi security forces, and that the plan was going well.

'Since the beginning of this year, multinational forces have not been acting unilaterally, without the consent of the Iraqi government and Iraqi armed forces,' Perkins said. 'In future, everything can be done in partnership and coordination with the Iraqi forces? This is an important step.'

Police General Abdel-Karim Khalaf, chief of operations at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, on Sunday warned against viewing the recent spate of attacks as an indication that al-Qaeda had regained its strength.

'Al-Qaeda is conducting attacks with no planning and no clear goals,' Khalaf told dpa on Sunday. The recent bombings in Mosul 'were random, and did not cause as many casualties as did previous attacks.'

A second security source, speaking to