BAGHDAD, May 5 (UPI) -- A suicide bomber attacked a police training center in Hilla, Iraq, killing at least 30 people and wounding 75 Thursday, a health ministry official said.
A local minister blamed the attack on al-Qaida followers responding to the death earlier this week of Osama bin Laden, The New York Times reported.
"This was a breach of our security by al-Qaida," said Haider Zanbor, the head of Babil province's security committee, saying he expected such attacks in the wake of bin Laden death during a U.S. raid Sunday of his compound in Pakistan. "We will increase the security procedure to prevent this from happening again."
Security officials told the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA the explosion damaged several Iraqi police vehicles and left a crater at the site of the police station. The car bomb was loaded with 150 kilograms of explosives, and the suicide bomber broke into the station during a shift change.
A Health Ministry spokesman told KUNA he expected the number of casualties to increase as crews searched the rubble.
The explosion toppled several blast walls and damaged the front rooms of the training center, as well as several homes in the city south of Baghdad, Iraq's capital, the Times reported.
