Suicide bomber kills job hunters

BAGHDAD – Young men from some of Iraq’s poorest areas waited all night outside an army recruitment centre, only to become easy prey yesterday for a suicide bomber who killed 61 of them. Desperate for jobs, dazed survivors rushed to get back in line after the attack.Officials quickly blamed al-Qaida for the deadliest single act of violence in the capital in months. Police said 125 people were wounded.Bodies of bloodied young men, some still clutching job applications in their hands, were scattered on the ground outside the headquarters’ gate. Soldiers collected bits of flesh and stray hands and legs as frantic Iraqis showed up to search for relatives.The early morning bombing in central Baghdad starkly displayed Iraqi forces’ failure to plug even the most obvious holes in their security two weeks before the formal end of the United States’ combat role in Iraq.Army and police recruitment centres have been frequent targets for militants, underscoring the determination of the applicants to risk their lives for work in a country with an unemployment rate estimated as high as 30 per cent.“I have to get this job at any cost in order to feed my family,” said Ali Ahmed, 34, a father of two who returned to the bloody street after taking a friend to the hospital. “I have no option but to come back to the line. If there were other job opportunities, I would not be here in the first place.”Ali Ibrahim, 21, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds in the blast, returned to the line after his release from the hospital.“I came back with my friend to try to get in. We are forced to come back for the sake of earning a living by securing the job,” said Ibrahim, who had been waiting since 3 a.m.Yasir Ali, a 29-year-old recruit, washed blood off his body at a nearby police station and then went back to the line outside the Iraqi army’s 11th Division headquarters and recruiting centre.The men waited in vain. The recruitment centre was shut down after the attack, and the military said it would not reopen. Even so, some applicants remained there until at least mid-afternoon.The suicide bomber sat patiently with them through dawn before launching his attack, Ali said.Ali said he watched the bomber, whom he described as a young blond-haired man, walk up to an Iraqi army officer and detonate the nail-packed explosives strapped to his legs at about 7:30 a.m.“Severed hands and legs were falling over me,” Ali said. (AP)