09 February 2005	Wednesday	29 Zilhaj 1425

BAGHDAD, Feb 8: Fifteen soldiers and army recruits were killed on Tuesday as Al-Qaeda linked insurgents stepped up their bloody campaign of suicide bombings against the security forces.

A controversial politician lost two sons in another attack in Baghdad. The Iraqi government announced the arrest of a relative of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein accused of financing and arming the insurgency and sheltering members of the old regime.

A suicide bomber wearing a belt of explosives walked into a crowd of Iraqis queuing up to enlist in the Iraqi army and blew himself up, killing two soldiers and 13 recruits and wounding 15 other people, an interior ministry official said.

"I came to Baghdad from Hilla with two friends to join the army," said Mohammad Abdel Hussein, 22, who survived with a head wound. "We were queuing with several other young people when there was an enormous explosion in the middle of the group."

The attack was the latest in a wave of strikes targeting Iraqi security forces since the country's landmark Jan 30 election.

Militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing, in an Internet statement.

"A lion from the martyrs brigade of the Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers infiltrated the centre of 'a group of apostates' wanting to join the national guard," said a statement posted on a website.

In another deadly attack in the capital on Tuesday, gunmen sprayed gunfire on the car of Mithal al-Alusi, an outspoken Iraqi politician who favours normalising ties with Israel.

"Yes, my two sons died and my bodyguard as well. It was a gunfire attack on my car near my house," said the 52-year-old Alusi.

Amid the unrest, more details from the election count showed the United Iraqi Alliance, backed by top Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was set to get more than half of the seats in the new 275-member national assembly.

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will press Nato allies to help out more in Iraq.-AFP