A “terrorist training camp” north of Baghdad was the site of carnage today during an instructor’s class for suicide bombers, when he accidentally blew the class up, killing himself and 21 students.
According to the reports, the instructor was demonstrating how to detonate a suicide explosive belt, unaware that his demonstration belt was actually filled with live explosives and detonated for real.
The camp, said to belong to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), had been the source of a lot of attacks in the surrounding area, and locals saw the accident as sort of poetic justice for the bombers.
The bombing sent surviving fighters scrambling, since the huge explosion in a rural area was a dead giveaway of their location. All told 22 were dead, 15 wounded, and eight others arrested while trying to flee. The Iraqi military also seized large amounts of explosives and other equipment from elsewhere in the camp.
