47 killed in explosion at headquarter for training Iraqi army

In the second attack within 24 hours against the Iraqi security members, 47 persons were killed and scores wounded in a booby trapped car explosion in Baghdad. The car went off in front of a center for recruiting members of the Iraqi army near al-Muthanna airport, in al-Allawi area, in the downtown of Baghdad.

An American military spokesman said that the executor of the attack targeted by the booby trapped car a training center as hundreds of Iraqis gathered for recruitment in the new Iraqi army. The spokesman explained that the car was loaded with half a ton of explosives and some artillery shells to increase the power of the explosion.

News reports indicate that most of the victims are Iraqi civilians who gathered at the center for recruitment in the army.

A similar attack targeted a police center in Alexandria town, to the south Baghdad, on Tuesday morning, and resulted in killing 55 and wounding 100, many of them in critical condition. The Iraqi interior ministry secretary, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Ibrahim Kazem, accused foreigners who came to Iraq, whom he did not identify, of being responsible for blowing up the police center on Tuesday.

Tuesday and Wednesday explosions are in line of series of explosions targeting Iraqis under the charge of collaborating with the American occupation.

Iraqi officials said that some 300 policemen were killed in attacks by Iraqi resistance members. Worthy mentioning that the Iraqi forces trained by the US is a basic component in Washington's plans to assign security responsibilities for the Iraqis before sovereignty transfer.

In a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, after Tuesday's attack, the US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it is impossible to protect each position of an expected attack, simultaneously.

Chief of the joint American army chief of staff Richard Meyers said in the same conference that he is optimistic over the issue of security in Iraq despite the explosion. Rumslfeld said that there are between 150,000 to 210,000 Iraqis working in the security forces.

At the political level, the UN mission, chaired by Elakhder al-Ibraheimi in charge of organizing a general elections in Iraq met yesterday several members of the civil society.

The spokesman for the mission Ahmad Fawzi said that his team met international experts in organizing elections and members of the Iraqi civil society. Al-Ibraheimi warned that premature elections might inflect on Iraq greater damages more than the expected benefits.