BAQUBA, Iraq, July 28 (AFP) - Some 68 people were killed and scores injured Wednesday in a massive suicide bombing outside an Iraqi police station, as US Secretary of State Colin Powell was to meet Middle East allies after urging coalition forces to keep their nerve in Iraq.
Powell condemned the car-bomb which ripped through a bus and a queue of scores of Iraqis waiting outside the police station in Baquba, north of Baghdad, in the hope of finding work.
The bombing was yet another "attempt by murderers to deny the Iraqi people the dream of a peaceful sovereign country", Powell told reporters in Cairo ahead of talks with Egyptian leaders.
Dozens of maimed bodies were strewn outside the police post amid pools of blood mixed with mud, while at least a dozen bodies were lined up outside the town's hospital morgue, already crammed to overflowing.
"The hospital officials have told me that 68 were dead and 56 injured in the Baquba blast," Iraqi health minister Alaa Abdessahab al-Alwan told AFP.
Powell vowed such incidents as the Baquba attack would not "deter us" from "our goal.
The attack came just hours after Powell pleaded with allies to stand firm, saying in Hungary on Tuesday that "democracy is hard, democracy is dangerous," but warning it was not the time to "get weak in the knees and say 'gosh this might be too hard, let's leave this people alone so tyrants can return'."
The secretary of state was due to raise concerns about the situation in Iraq with Egyptian leaders, before travelling later in the day to Saudi Arabia. But Egypt said Wednesday it would prefer not to be part of a force to protect the UN mission in Iraq.
The suicide bombing came as the Iraqi interim government marked its first month in power since the United States handed over sovereignty on June 28 following the coalition's March 2003 invasion.
On Thursday, Powell will meet with interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Jeddah, a US official said in Cairo.
The initial relative calm which followed the transition of power has been rudely shattered, with the Sunni Muslim belt north and west from the capital, Baghdad, seeing almost daily attacks and car bombings against symbols of Allawi's caretaker government.
A national conference aimed at selecting a 100-member interim national council to advise the government until elections due in January is to start a four-day meeting on Saturday even though UN officials have said it should be postponed.
But nostalgia for Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime runs high in the Sunni Muslim belt, fuelled by chronic poverty and mass unemployment and quelling the insurgency is proving a difficult job for the coalition.
Baquba has suffered frequent attacks targeting US-backed Iraqi security forces, some of which have been claimed by Al-Qaeda's suspected chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
The US military said about 35 insurgents were killed and more than 40 arrested in a joint Ukrainian, US and Iraqi raid south of Baghdad, early Wednesday.
"Approximately 35 anti-Iraqi force members were killed and more than 40 were detained," in the joint raid around the town of Sueira at 7:00 am (0300 GMT), the US military said in a statement.
A senior medic in the nearby city of Kut said five Iraqi security force officers were killed and 48 others wounded in the clashes.
NATO has agreed to help train the fledgling Iraqi security forces to help them prepare to take over from the US-led coalition, but the accord has bogged amid opposition notably from France over delivering such training inside Iraq.
"Allies want to reach a consensus on this. Most allies want to do it this week ... for a training mission inside Iraq beginning as early as next week," said one diplomat in Brussels.
Another diplomat confirmed the United States was pushing hard for an accord, adding two high-level meetings were scheduled at NATO's Brussels headquarters Wednesday to try to hammer out a deal.
Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti employer of seven truck drivers snatched in Iraq was Wednesday holding serious talks with their kidnappers to secure their release, a diplomat said.
"There is hope for a breakthrough soon," the source added, referring to the haulage firm, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport.
Iraqi militants called "Holders of the Black Banners" a week ago snatched three Indians, three Kenyans and an Egyptian, threatening to execute them if their employer does not pull out of Iraq.
The group later suspended the execution threat and appointed tribal chief Sheikh Hisham al-Dulaimi to lead the negotiations.
In further violence, two Iraqis suspected of trying to bomb a pipeline in the country's oil-rich north and a Kirkuk policeman were killed Wednesday.
And in Balad Ruz, another troublespot not far from Baquba, a US soldier was killed and three comrades wounded when their convoy was ambushed while they were out on patrol late Tuesday, the US military said.
More than 670 American troops have now been killed since the launch of the US-led invasion in March 2003, based on Pentagon figures.