Iraq hit by another wave of violence

Insurgents stepped up their campaign to stop Sunni Arabs from joining government security forces yesterday, killing at least 15 police recruits in a suicide attack and fatally shooting three soldiers who had recently joined the Iraqi army.

Both attacks occurred in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad where some of Iraq's worst terrorist attacks and battles between Sunni-led insurgents and US forces have taken place since the Iraq war began more than three years ago.

The suicide bomber blew himself up while standing in a line of recruits outside Fallujah's police headquarters, killing at least 15 people and wounding 30, said a spokesman. Thirteen of the dead were recruits and two were policemen.

At the same time, police discovered the bodies of three soldiers from Fallujah who had been shot and dumped in Khaldiyah, a city west of their home town.

Overnight, four students were taken out of a minibus in Baghdad and shot. And in a separate incident, police found the bodies of 16 Iraqi men in the Shaab district of Baghdad who were apparently the latest victims of a wave of sectarian violence involving death squads who kidnap civilians, torture them and dump their bodies.