BAGHDAD, 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.
In 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.
Three car bombs also exploded in Baghdad, killing at least four, police said.
Meantime, U.S. forces pushed ahead with a sweep of alleged insurgent bases in a remote region near the border with Syria.
Attack on recruits
Police 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.
?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.
Qadir said 30 people were killed and 35 were wounded, including about 15 who were in critical condition.
Like 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.
Insurgents 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.
Swerving into crowd
In 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.
The 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.
He 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.
In Baghdad, three car bombs killed four people and wounded 14, police said.
The worst blast 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.
Marines push into ?difficult? border area
Meantime, capitalizing on a lull in fighting Tuesday, hundreds of U.S. Marines pushed through a lawless region on the Syrian frontier after intense battles along the Euphrates River with well-armed militants fighting from basements, rooftops and sandbag bunkers.
Insurgents also kidnapped the provincial governor as a bargaining chip.
As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of Operation Matador, as American troops cleared villages along the meandering Euphrates then crossed in rafts and on a pontoon bridge, the U.S. command said. Many of the dead remained trapped under rubble after attack planes and helicopter gunships pounded their hideouts.
At least three Marines were reported killed and 20 wounded during the first three days of the offensive ? the biggest U.S. operation since Fallujah was taken from extremists six months ago.
The operation was launched after U.S. intelligence showed followers of Iraq?s most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took refuge in the remote desert region ? a haven for smugglers and insurgent suppliers. The fighters were believed to have fled to Anbar Province after losses in Iraqi cities.
