01 March 2005	Tuesday	19 Muharram 1426

HILLA, Feb 28: A suicide bomber killed at least 125 people on Monday when he blew up his car in the middle of a crowd in a central Iraqi town, in the deadliest single attack since the US-led invasion two years ago.

The massive blast came as an Iraqi special tribunal said one of Saddam Hussein's half-brothers, his former vice-president and three others would be the first former regime members to go on trial for crimes against humanity.

Hospital officials upped the death toll to 125 from the carnage in Hilla, a farming town some 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, after four of the 133 wounded died of their injuries.

The bomb exploded among job-seekers queuing outside a health clinic for checks that would allow them to work for the state or return to jobs lost after the fall of Saddam's regime, medics said.

"We found the hands of the suicide bomber attached to the steering wheel of the vehicle and a burned copy of the Koran in the wreckage," a fire officer in the town of some 500,000 residents, told AFP.

Ambulances ferried the wounded to hospital as the wreckage of the explosives-packed car smouldered in the street. Bystanders helped lift the bloodied casualties from the debris of the explosion.

Most of the victims were former civil servants, officials said. Doctors worked steadily to tend the wounded who filled almost every room at Hilla general hospital. The car was packed with several dozen kilos (more than 100 pounds) of TNT and mortar rounds to cause "the maximum number of victims", said police forensics chief Thamer Sultan.

"This criminal act targeted citizens who did not have any ties to the army and police," said Walid Janabi, governor of Babil province of which Hilla is the capital. In other violence, an American soldier was shot dead at a traffic checkpoint in Baghdad on Sunday, the US army said.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a gun battle near the restive city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, while an Iraqi soldier and translator died in a mortar attack near Dhuluiya, also north of the capital, Iraqi security officials said. A civilian was killed and two were wounded during a small arms attack on a police station in Baquba, the US military and Iraqi witnesses said. -AFP