A lesson on how to prepare suicide bombs in Iraq has gone terribly wrong, killing 21 militants and wounding a further 15

Explosive situation ... smoke rises after a parked car bomb went off at a commercial centre in Khilani Square in central Baghdad, Iraq. 

 IT was supposed to be an explosive piece of training. But a group of 21 Iraqi militants have ended up blowing themselves up in a lesson gone horribly wrong.

The training was supposed to prepare the volunteers for their final act of defiance against the Iraqi government. But the accidental detonation of their car bomb hidden in an orchard left 21 of the insurgents — and their instructor — dead.

The explosion attracted the attention of local authorities who arrested a further 22 members of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) at their secret camp near the town of al-Jalam, about 95km north of Baghdad. About 15 of them had been wounded in the blast.
Security forces found seven car bombs, several explosive belts and roadside bombs after searching two houses and a garage in the orchard.

Police said the militants were attending a demonstration on making car bombs and explosive belts when a glitch set off one of the devices.

The identity of the bomb-making instructor has not been released, but an Iraqi Army officer told the New York Times he was a known prolific recruiter for suicide bombings.

Deadly weapon ... Iraqi security forces inspect a car destroyed after a car-bomb attack in the Jamila neighbourhood of Baghdad, Iraq. 

 

Reports that the group was making a promotional video have not been sourced and are not confirmed.
Car bombs are one of the deadliest weapons used by the al-Qaeda breakaway group that dominates the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Coordinated waves of explosions regularly leave scores dead in Baghdad and elsewhere across the country.

The bombs are sometimes assembled in farm compounds where militants can gather without being spotted or in car workshops in industrial areas. Police say the camp outside Samarra, a Sunni city 60 miles north of Baghdad, was in an orchard in the village of al-Jalam.

In the city of Mosul to the north, meanwhile, the speaker of Parliament, one of the most prominent Sunni officials in Iraq, escaped unhurt from a roadside bomb attack on his motorcade.