Issue date: 2/12/04 Section: News

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide driver blew up his explosive-rigged car Wednesday outside an army recruiting center in central Baghdad where hundreds of Iraqis were lined up to volunteer for the military, killing at least 36 people, U.S. officials and Iraqi witnesses said.

Iraq's deputy interior minister, Ahmed Ibrahim, said 47 people were killed and 50 injured. He told reporters ''this crime'' will ''not deter the people's march toward freedom.''

It was the second deadly suicide attack in two days on Iraqis working with the U.S.-led coalition, following a truck bombing against a police station south of Baghdad that killed up to 53 people and wounded scores, including would-be Iraqi recruits applying for jobs.

U.S. officials have been warning of a possible increase in attacks - particularly against Iraqis - as insurgents try to disrupt the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government.

''This could be a new trend of terrorist activity; could be part of the ongoing pattern of intimidation we've seen of late,'' Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's deputy operations chief in Baghdad, told The Associated Press in an e-mail interview. ''We have stated numerous times that in the lead-up to governance, there could be an uptick in the violence.''

Wednesday's blast took place about 7:25 a.m. in a neighborhood located less than a mile from the green zone, the high-security area where U.S. administrators are headquartered, a coalition spokesman said. U.S. troops closed off the area.

Charred debris from the vehicle was scattered across the road in front of the center as a heavy rain soaked troops and FBI agents looking for evidence at the blast scene.

Col. Ralph Baker of the 1st Armored Division said a man driving a white 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra detonated about 00 to 500 pounds of explosives. Maj. John Frisbie, spokesman of the 2nd Brigade 1st Armored Division, put the death toll at 36.

The recruitment center was surrounded by barbed wire and had sandbagged posts in front of it. But around 300 Iraqis were gathered outside the center's locked gates, waiting for it to open, and were completely exposed.

''I saw a white Oldsmobile slowly approaching. It ran over some people and exploded,'' said Ghasan Sameer, 32, an officer in the new Iraqi army, speaking in a hushed voice from his hospital bed. ''I was blown up in the air and saw fire and body parts all around me.'' His legs were broken and he was wounded by shrapnel.

Hussein Raad, 20, was in the line of volunteers when he noticed a car approaching ''and suddenly felt the blast.''

''The blast threw me a few yards away,'' Raad said. He was among the wounded.

In the neighboring bed at Yarmouk hospital, Amer Hussein, 25, his body heavily burned, moaned in pain as attendants wrapped his right leg in cotton gauze. Hussein's left leg was severed at the ankle, and a pool of blood had gathered under his bed.

Baker, the U.S. colonel, said there was no immediate indication who was behind the attack but said it resembled ''the operating technique'' of al-Qaida or Ansar al-Islam.

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