Three blasts killed at least 34 Iraqis today, most of them in a suicide car bombing that struck a group of police recruits, the AP reports. It was one of the highest daily casualty tolls in recent months. Two of the bombs went off in Diyala province, which has been the site of much of the recent violence and a stronghold of Sunni insurgents.
In one provincial town, a car bomb exploded where police recruits were gathered, killing 25 and wounding 40, police said. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb struck a van, killing five members of a Sunni family on the way to a religious shrine, an official said. And a bomb planted in a parked car killed four people and wounded six, including three policemen, during the morning rush hour in the city of Tikrit, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency which has quieted in the past year. (More Iraq stories.)