A suicide attacker blew up a bomb-filled car at a police station south of Baghdad, killing 21 policemen on Thursday, as Iraqi forces braced for al-Qaeda revenge attacks after Osama bin Laden's death.
The attack, which also wounded at least 75 policemen, was the worst in Iraq in more than a month and pushed security chiefs to install new checkpoints, tighten access to key roads and restrict movement between provinces. The bombing left a two-metre (six-foot) crater and badly damaged the police station in the centre of the mainly Shiite city of Hilla, capital of Babil province, in addition to several nearby houses and shops.
On Tuesday, a car bomb tore through a cafe in Baghdad packed with young men watching a football match on TV, killing at least 16 people.
Most of the dead and wounded in the cafe were young people. The blast occurred in a Shiite enclave in the former insurgent stronghold of Dora, an area in southwestern Baghdad that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq conflict.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for that attack either, but Sunni insurgents have often targeted Shiites, who they don’t consider to be true Muslims, as a way to incite sectarian violence.
