Car bomb hits Iraq police station where 24 were killed

A car bomb exploded today near a police station south of Baghdad where, a day earlier, a suicide attacker killed 24 policemen, a security official and an AFP journalist said.

No casualties were immediately reported as a result of the 2pm (local time) explosion, just 50m from the bombing on Thursday morning that also wounded 72 people, an AFP reporter said.

A second explosives-packed vehicle was also found near the blast site in Hilla, 95km south of Baghdad, but security forces defused it, according to a police lieutenant.

Yesterday's bombing was the deadliest to hit Iraq in more than a month as security chiefs braced for revenge attacks by al-Qaeda following the death of Osama bin Laden in a US commando raid in Pakistan on Sunday.

"Twenty-four policemen died, including five captains and two lieutenants, and 72 were wounded," said the director of Hilla's main surgical hospital.

He added that, of the wounded, 25 remained in serious condition.

Yesterday's bombing left a two-metre crater and badly damaged the police station in the centre of the mainly Shiite city, capital of Babil province, in addition to several nearby houses and shops.

Hilla lies just beyond the edge of a confessionally mixed area south of the capital that earned the monicker Triangle of Death during sectarian bloodshed that peaked in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but security forces nationwide began tightening security in the wake of the bombing.