Lunchtime bombing kills 16 soldiers at Iraqi army base

A suicide bomber disguised in army uniform blew himself up at an Iraqi military base as soldiers queued for lunch yesterday, killing at least 16 troops and wounding 50, officials said.
The attack at the base in Habbaniyah, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of Baghdad, was the latest in a series of deadly bombings in recent weeks in Iraq, which have killed nearly 100 people and injured three times as many.
"Sixteen soldiers were killed and 50 others were wounded, including officers, when a suicide bomber blew himself up among the soldiers, who were in a queue waiting to enter the cafeteria," a defence ministry official told AFP.
"The attacker was wearing an Iraqi army uniform," he said, adding that no civilians are allowed into the base.
Police confirmed the attack, saying the suicide bomber had concealed his explosives under his uniform.
Habbaniyah is in Iraq's western Anbar province, the one-time epicentre of the country's Sunni insurgency that in recent years has seen vast overall improvements in security.
Iraq's armed forces have been hit by a rash of attacks in recent days, underscoring the fragility of the country's security gains less than three months before US soldiers are to withdraw from all cities and major towns.

Thursday's attack took the number of people killed in violence so far this month to at least 99, with 297 wounded, according to an AFP tally based on reports by police and security officials.
On Wednesday, a car bomb tore through a bus carrying Iraqi police through the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, killing 10 policemen and wounding 22 of their colleagues.
Local officials blamed that attack on al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has been largely driven out of most of its former strongholds but retains the ability to carry out deadly bombings across the country.
Last week a suicide bomber similarly disguised in military fatigues killed nine people, including soldiers and members of the US-allied Sahwa "Awakening" forces, at their headquarters in the town of Hilla south of Baghdad.
Also last week, a suicide truck bomb struck a police compound in Mosul during a visit by US troops, killing five US soldiers and three members of Iraqi security forces in the deadliest attack on US forces in more than a year.
The recent streak of bombings could endanger the US military's plans to withdraw from all major population centres by June 30 in accordance with a security pact signed in November last year.
This week Colonel Gary Volesky, a US commander in northern Iraq, said the troops would remain in the volatile city of Mosul -- Iraq's second largest -- if Baghdad asked them to.
And Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi separately told reporters in Paris that his government was prepared to be flexible in the case of Mosul, where al-Qaeda in Iraq still launches attacks on a regular basis.
Despite repeated Iraqi-US operations in Mosul, the city is still gripped by a strong insurgency, in part due to a complex Kurd, Sunni and Christian mix but also because of tribal rivalries.
The Anbar province where Thursday's attack took place was the birthplace of the Sahwa movement, also known as the Sons of Iraq, in late 2006, in which local tribes and former insurgents allied with US forces to drive out al-Qaeda.
The Sahwas have played a crucial role in bringing calm to large swathes of Iraq that were plunged into violent chaos following the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein but have also been repeatedly targeted by militants.