This morning’s suicide bombers who killed 27 people at a Baghdad police academy were men, not women as had been widely reported.
Iraqi Police Academy Attackers Not Women, Officials Say (American Forces Press Service)
Contrary to an earlier report, two suicide bombers who killed at least 27 people and wounded at least 50 others today in a crowded courtyard at the Baghdad police academy were men, military officials reported. “An ongoing investigation indicates the bombers, earlier reported as females, were male,” a Multinational Force Iraq news release said.
Officials pointed out that suicide bombings by women have been rare in Iraq. Only two such bombings are known to have been carried out by women: one in September 2005 and another in 2003, officials said. The officials went on to note that the bombings were the worst violence for months in the Iraqi capital, where, they said, police officials are a favored target of Sunni Arab insurgents.
Odd that they’d have made the mistake initially. It’s true that women have been rare among Iraq’s suicide bombers, although the trend has otherwise been growing since the first such attack twenty years ago.
