More blasts rock Iraq, killing 60

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Five suicide attacks in three cities in Iraq killed more than 60 people Wednesday. In the deadliest, a man with hidden explosives set them off in a line of people outside a police and army recruitment center in northern Iraq, killing 30 and wounding 35, police said.\nIn Tikrit, meanwhile, a suicide car bomb exploded in a small market near a police station, killing at least 27 people and wounding 75, police said.\nThree car bombs also exploded in Baghdad, killing at least four, police said.\nPolice first thought the powerful blast in Hawija, a small town 150 miles north of Baghdad, was caused by a car bomb, but police Maj. Sarhad Qadir later said they later found it was an attacker waiting in a line of about 150 recruits.\n"I was standing near the center and all of a sudden it turned into a scene of dead bodies and pools of blood," said police Sgt. Khalaf Abbas. "Windows were blown out in nearby houses, leaving the street covered by glass." He spoke in an interview from the chaotic scene over his cell phone.\nQadir said 30 people were killed and 35 were wounded, including about 15 who were in critical condition.\nLike many other such recruitment centers in Iraq, Hawija's is located in a building surrounded by cement walls topped with barbed wire in an effort to prevent attacks by car bombs. Men often line up outside such centers early in the morning to apply for jobs at a time of high unemployment in Iraq.\nInsurgents target the centers, and Iraqi security forces on patrol, in an effort to block a key goal of U.S. forces -- to one day be replaced by newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police.\nIn Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, meanwhile, Police Lt. Col. Saad Daham said that security prevented the car-bomb attacker from exploding his vehicle in front of the police station, but that the bomber swerved into a crowd of people at the nearby market.\nThe bomb exploded at 7:15 a.m., and many day laborers who had traveled to Tikrit from poor areas of Iraq were waiting at the market to be picked up for work at construction sites, Daham said.\nHe said at least 27 people -- mostly civilians -- were killed and that 75 were wounded. At Tikrit General Hospital, Dr. Faisal Mahmoud said the facility was too small to handle so many casualties.\nIn Baghdad, three car bombs killed four people and wounded 14, police said.\nThe worst of those blasts occurred in the southern neighborhood of Dora near a police station, killing three civilians and wounding nine, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.\nIn Yarmouk, an area of west Baghdad, a suicide car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in Jordan Square, killing a civilian and wounding three policeman, said police Lt. Col. Kadhim Abbas.\nIn New Baghdad, an eastern area of the capital, a car bomb exploded near al-Darweesh bakery about 100 yards from a police patrol, wounding two civilians and damaging civilian cars parked nearby, said police Lt. Col. Ahmed Aboud.