BAGHDAD, July 10: At least 34 people, mostly young men seeking to join the Iraqi army, were killed in a spate of suicide bombings on Sunday as the United States and Britain considered a drastic troop reduction in the country.

In the deadliest of the seven attacks, a bomber blew himself up outside an army recruitment centre at Baghdad’s Muthana airfield, killing 19 people and wounding 41.

The bombing was later claimed in an Internet statement posted in the name of the Al Qaeda-linked group of Iraq’s most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“At 9am (0500 GMT) we were all together waiting to enter the camp... Then we heard a huge explosion,” said Saad Mejid, 19, who was among the injured would-be recruits.

In northern Iraq, two civilians died when a bomber blew up a car outside municipal offices in the oil centre of Kirkuk, while five policemen were killed when the driver of a pickup truck blew himself up alongside their convoy near the region’s main city of Mosul, security sources said.

West of Baghdad, one US marine was injured and an Iraqi bystander killed when a suicide bomber drove his car at an army convoy near Fallujah, while the bomber was the only casualty in another attack in Ramadi, the US military said.

And at the Waleed border crossing on the main road from Baghdad to Damascus, seven Iraqi customs officers were killed when two suicide bombers blew up their vehicles within seconds of each other.

In the capital, five US soldiers were wounded in the southern district of Dura when their convoy hit a roadside bomb.

A family of nine, including a two-year-old boy and three-year-old girl, were murdered as they slept in what police said was a “terrorist-related” incident.

The killing came on the day a British newspaper published a leaked defence ministry document discussing plans to drastically reduce the number of coalition troops and replace them with Iraqis.

Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr announced the launch of nationwide petition seeking the withdrawal of all foreign troops.

The US military said Iraqi police had thwarted a possible terrorist attack on the Kuwait embassy.—AFP