IraqA suicide bomber attacked a police recruitment centre in northern Iraq yesterday, killing over 40 people and wounding scores of others. The attack on the centre in Arbil, the Kurdish regional capital, came a day after Iraq's new government was sworn in and takes the country's death toll this week to about 200.
"There was a crowd who were receiving applications [for the police] and somebody entered the building and he blew himself up," Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister and a Kurd, said.
"This is terrorism - it is very hard to protect yourself against human bombs."
The exact death toll was unclear. Mr Zebari said more than 50 people were killed, but a US military spokesman later said 47 people had perished.
The formation of the new government has been met by a wave of attacks that has swept aside any optimism that the insurgency was waning following elections on January 30th.
There have also been concerns about increasing sectarian tensions in the country. The insurgency is dominated by Sunni Arabs and that community largely boycotted the elections, which marked a rise to power for Kurds and the majority Shia, groups oppressed under Saddam Hussein. A Kurdish coalition that came second in the elections has formed an alliance with the dominant Shia bloc in the new administration. Jalal Talabani, the president, is a Kurd.
Efforts to include Sunni Arabs in the new government, deemed important to finding a solution to the insurgency, have been deadlocked over which Sunni should get the key defence cabinet post.
"They [ insurgents] are trying their best to steer this towards an ethnic conflict but they have failed and they will fail, because this is terrorism and it has no religion," Mr Zebari said. "It is a cancer that has to be extracted by more effective security and by more assertive policing."
He said the recent bout of attacks was a result of the insurgents wanting to "show they are still alive and have not been defeated".
The violence has intensified as political wrangling between the Shia, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties continues, with five cabinet positions, including the important posts of oil and defence, unfilled. The main stumbling block is the politically sensitive defence post, which has been earmarked for a Sunni.
The northern Kurdish region, which enjoyed autonomy after the 1991 Gulf War, has been relatively free of attacks, but on Sunday a bomb exploded at the funeral of a Kurdish official in the area, killing more than 20 people. Iraq's security forces have been among the insurgents' prime targets. Building up a new national military and police force is a US priority.
On February 28th a suicide bomber killed more than 100 people were killed in Hilla, a predominantly Shia city south of Baghdad.