By ANTARA News/AFP,
Samarra, Iraq : A suicide bomber slammed his explosives-filled truck into the police station in the central Iraqi town of Dujail on Friday, killing at least 25 people, police and security officials said.
The attack occurred at around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) in the Shiite town located in the Sunni Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, just minutes before people were getting ready to break their fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
An interior ministry official in Baghdad said around 40 people were also wounded, while a police officer from Salaheddin said 21 people were hurt.
A defence ministery official in Baghdad also confirmed the attack.
Dujail, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Baghdad, was the site of an assassination attempt on executed dictator Saddam Hussein in 1982.
Saddam was executed in December 2006 after an Iraqi court found him guilty of ordering the killing of more than 140 Shiites suspected of planning his assassination attempt in 1982 in Dujail.
The attack was the second biggest in less than three weeks and comes at a time when the violence in Iraq is at a four-year low.
The last major suicide attack occurred on August 26, when a bomber thwarted a security check at a police recruiting centre in Jalawla and blew himself up, killing at least 25 young people.
Jalawla is in Diyala province, considered to be one of the most dangerous in Iraq.
Friday`s attack carried the hallmark of Al-Qaeda, which has been blamed for such spectacular attacks by the US military in the past.
On Thursday, US General David Petraeus, head of the coalition forces in Iraq, said that the jihadist group had been “damaged, degraded and is on the run” but still not defeated.
He said it still capable of launching “lethal, sensational, dangerous and barbaric attacks. Al-Qaeda remains dangerous and very adaptive.”