Three blasts killed at least 34 Iraqis on Tuesday, most of them in a suicide car bombing that struck a group of police recruits, officials said. 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 the provincial town of Jalula, an assailant drove a car toward a building where new police recruits had assembled, said Col. Ahmed Mahmoud Khalifa, the local police chief. The car approached the building but was stopped by guards. The driver then detonated the explosives, the chief said. He said 25 people were killed and 40 wounded. Local police have been forming an emergency response force in the region, with each tribal sheik allowed to send a certain number of recruits. Monday was the last day of recruitment, and applicants came to the police center on Tuesday to check whether they had been accepted, Khalifa said. After the blast, security forces imposed a curfew on Jalula, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.
