Enlarge imageARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of Iraqi traffic police trainees in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil on Monday, killing at least 12 and wounding more than 100, local officials said.
A spokesman for Arbil’s city council said the death toll could rise as many of the wounded were in serious condition. Saman Halabjayi, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Arbil confirmed the death toll and said 106 were wounded.
An Iraqi police witness said the bomber raced a red Toyota vehicle from a nearby building site onto a dry, sandy field behind the traffic police headquarters where more than 200 recruits had gathered for rollcall and police training.
Security forces opened fire on the vehicle, but could not stop it as it headed towards the crowd.
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"Some people were running away but others couldn’t move and the car blew up among them," said Raeder Mohammed, one of the trainees. "There are still body parts burning," he said shortly after the attack.
Pictures taken by a photographer for Reuters showed a completely destroyed large vehicle, possibly a pick-up truck, with the trunk of a man lying nearby.
The steering wheel, still visible in the wreckage, appeared to have been modified, possibly to aid detonation of the bomb. A severed head lay next to it.
Arbil, one of the main cities in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq and home to the Kurdish parliament and its newly installed president, has been relatively peaceful over the past two years apart from occasional, spectacular suicide attacks.
In May, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the offices of a Kurdish political party in Arbil, which also served as a police recruitment centre, killing 46 people.
