IRAQ: A suicide bomber killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 40 at an Iraqi army recruiting centre in western Baghdad yesterday, officials said.
The attack came as a leaked British government memo revealed US and British hopes to more than halve their troop numbers in Iraq over the next year.
Any such plan would rely on recruiting and training Iraqi forces to take over. But army recruits are a prime target for insurgents.
One Interior Ministry source put the death toll at Baghdad's Muthanna airfield recruitment station at 22. Police said 42 were wounded.
The Defence Ministry said 21 died.
The attack, claimed by al-Qaeda's Iraq wing in an Internet posting, was the bloodiest in Iraq for a week, since an almost identical attack on police recruits at another Baghdad base.
A twin suicide car bombing killed seven Iraqi customs officers at the Waleed border crossing from Syria.
A suicide car bomber killed three civilians and wounded 10 near the local authority building in the northern oil city of Kirkuk and five police were killed and three wounded near Mosul when a suicide bomber hit the motorcade of a district police chief.
A family of of nine, mainly women and children, were shot dead as they slept in their Baghdad home early on Sunday, police and witnesses said.
The killings, of Shia Muslims in a mainly Shia neighbourhood in the east of the capital, sparked accusations from local people that it was a sectarian attack by Sunnis.
The Muthanna airfield recruitment station, near Baghdad's city centre, has been struck before, part of a sustained campaign by Sunni Arab insurgents against the Shia-led government's fledgling security forces.
Those troops and police are a vital element in Washington's publicly proclaimed strategy of withdrawing its 140,000 or so troops over time and putting Iraqis in the front line of fighting the revolt among the once-dominant Sunni minority.
The leaked British government memo, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, described plans by Washington and London to cut their forces in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006, turning over territory to Iraqi forces to control.
The British government said the memo reflected just one possible scenario. A spokesman for the Pentagon, which has said the war could last years, said it had not decided upon a schedule for withdrawal.
The Mail on Sunday memo, apparently written by Defence Secretary John Reid, said Britain would cut its force to 3,000 from 8,500 and Washington planned to cut its forces to 66,000.
"Emerging US plans assume 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," the memo said.
"There is, however, a debate between the Pentagon/Centcom, who favour a relatively bold reduction in force numbers and the multinational force in Iraq, whose approach is more cautious."
President Bush has responded to opinion polls showing falling popularity for his Iraq policy by telling voters that US forces will stand down "as Iraqis stand up".
US commanders on the ground say they are pleased with the progress of Iraqi forces but warn that training will take time.
Reid said in response to the report: "We have made it absolutely plain we will stay in Iraq for as long as is needed".
In Washington Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant-Commander Joe Carpenter, said: "I am not aware of any decided-upon timeline".