Iraq Suicide Bomber Kills 16

A suicide bombing in Iraq's volatile, multi-ethnic Diyala province, which neighbors Iran, sent a fresh reminder on Sunday that the security situation in Iraq, while improving, is far from stable. The Iraqi government has been slightly more upbeat in the last week following the security forces' success in its most recent military offensive in Maysan, another province that borders Iran and is purportedly a major hub for arms smuggling into Iraq. But Sunday's bombing, which killed 16 people and wounded at least 35 in Diyala's capital, Baquba, provided a painful reminder that Basra, Sadr City, Mosul, and Amara-the four targets of recent Iraqi military campaigns-are not the only areas that need Iraqi military attention. Despite violence hitting a four-year low, Diyala remains a stronghold for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

But perhaps more troubling is the fact that Sunday's attacker was a woman, who detonated her explosives in a crowd of policemen on their lunch break. Female bombers have become much more common in Iraq, as insurgents turn to new strategies for accessing increasingly better protected Iraqi and American security targets. Women often pass unexamined at Iraqi security checkpoints, where they are often underestimated as security threats, and where the female officers-who, due to cultural and religious mores, would be required to frisk them-are generally nonexistent. Most Iraqi women outside of Baghdad also don the loose, all-encompassing black abayya, which can easily hide the bulk of a vest packed with explosives. So far in 2008, CNN has reported 20 attacks carried out by female suicide bombers-most of them in Diyala and Baghdad, up from seven in all of 2007.

Sunday's bombing was the second serious attack involving women to strike Iraq in a week. On Tuesday, a car bomb detonated at a densely-packed marketplace in northwest Baghdad, killing 63 people. Witnesses said a group of two men and four women had driven the car into the market and departed before the blast.

Iraqi and American security officials have blamed Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq for many of the bombings over the past year involving women. The extremist group has also been accused of recruiting or kidnapping women who are mentally disabled to use for the job. But TIME has identified at least one case of a woman volunteering herself to an insurgent organization for an attack, and American officials have cited several other cases that were likely motivated by a personal vendetta. Indeed, with an ever-increasing number of widows, and the easier passage that potential female bombers have over their male counterparts, the trend looks likely to rise.