IRAQ Suicide car bomb blast kills 68

The blast occurred outside the police station where people were seeking jobs.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide car bomb exploded outside a police recruiting center in Baqouba today, killing 68 Iraqis and turning the busy city streets into a bloody tangle of twisted metal and dead bodies.
The attacker drove a car carrying explosives up to the crowd of people gathered outside the al-Najda station in Baqouba to apply for police jobs, said Gen. Walid al-Azawi, chief of police in Diyala Province.
Charred and dismembered bodies lay in a street amid pools of blood, building debris and shattered glass. The body of one victim lay underneath a slab of concrete, while emergency crews carried the bodies of injured and slain victims into waiting ambulances.
Officials said the casualties in the busy downtown area appeared to be largely civilians.
"We are facing people who are fanatic. They will do anything to inflict heavy casualties on our people," Iraq's Deputy Foreign Minister Labeed Abbawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. "It is directed to our people, rather than to the foreign troops, unfortunately, to the police forces."
Fight with insurgents
Also today, fierce fighting killed seven Iraqi soldiers fighting alongside multinational troops and some 35 insurgents, a military spokesman said. An additional 10 soldiers from the Iraqi security forces were wounded in the joint operation with U.S. Army special forces and Ukrainian troops, said Polish Lt. Col. Artur Domanski, a multinational force spokesman, in a telephone interview from Iraq.
No multinational or U.S. forces suffered any casualties in the fighting near the south-central city of Suwariyah Domanski said. Some 40 insurgents were also taken prisoner.
The Baqouba blast destroyed nearby shops and turned cars into mangled, burned-out wrecks. Saad al-Amili, a Health Ministry official, said earlier that the explosion killed 51 people and wounded at least 40, while U.S. Army Capt. Marshall Jackson told The Associated Press that he knew of at least 20 deaths.
"Basically there's a police station in the area, government buildings in the area ... little shops, fruit stands, basically where all the action takes place," U.S. Army Capt. Marshall Jackson told The Associated Press. "Right now it doesn't look great. It's all civilian casualties at this stage."
Regularly attacked
Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, has seen regular anti-coalition attacks since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003. Fighters have also repeatedly targeted Iraqi police forces, who are seen as easier targets than American troops. On July 19, a fuel tanker truck plowed toward a police station in southwest Baghdad, detonating and killing at least nine people and wounding more than 60.
It was the deadliest insurgent attack in Iraq since June 24, when coordinated attacks in north and central Iraq killed 89 people, including three U.S. soldiers. On April 21, five suicide bombings near police stations and police academy in southern city of Basra killed 74 people and wounded 160 others.
Expected to continue
Iraqi officials have said they expect attacks to continue and intensify as the country tries to edge toward democracy. They expect that a national conference to choose an interim national assembly, set to begin Saturday, will be a major terror target.
The conference, announced Tuesday, will bring together 1,000 delegates. It is considered a vital step toward democracy in a nation struggling to deal with a persistent campaign of kidnappings and other violence.
The conference, stipulated under a law enacted by the former U.S. occupation authority, was to have been concluded by the end of July, but it had to be delayed because preparations were behind schedule, conference chair Fuad Masoum said.
"There was an idea put forward by the United Nations to delay the conference because of a lack of preparation, from technical and other perspectives," Masoum said. "We don't want to go ahead without the U.N."