3 soldiers killed in Iraq suicide bombing

Three soldiers were killed and 31 trainee soldiers wounded in a suicide attack on an Iraq Army recruitment centre Thursday, a police source said.

A suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden truck into the entrance of the centre at a military base northwest of Kirkuk, 250 km north of the Iraq's capital Baghdad, Xinhua cited the police source as saying.

The suicide bomber tried hard to blow up his truck near a group of young men who had lined up at the entrance of the base to sign up to be recruits, but the guards opened fire on him, forcing him to blow it up outside the entrance, the source said.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.