BAGHDAD — Young men from some of Iraq’s poorest areas waited all night outside an army recruitment center, only to become easy prey yesterday for a suicide bomber, who killed 61.

Desperate for jobs, dazed survivors rushed to get back in line after the attack.

Officials quickly blamed al-Qaida for the deadliest act of violence in the capital in months. Police said 125 people were wounded.

Bodies of bloodied young men, some still clutching job applications, were scattered on the ground outside the headquarters’ gate.

The bombing in central Baghdad starkly displayed Iraqi forces’ failure to plug even the most obvious holes in their security two weeks before the formal end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

Unemployment in Iraq is estimated to be as high as 30 percent.

“I have to get this job at any cost in order to feed my family,” said Ali Ahmed, 34, a father of two who returned to the bloody street after taking a friend to the hospital. “I have no option but to come back to the line. If there were other job opportunities, I would not be here in the first place.”

The recruitment center was shut down after the attack, and the military said it would not reopen yesterday. Even so, some applicants remained there until midafternoon.

On the last of a nine-day recruitment drive, Iraqi officials provided only scant security for the estimated 1,000 men hoping to get hired, hundreds of whom had stayed outside the headquarters overnight for a first shot at handing in their job applications. The bomber sat with them through dawn before attacking.

Ali Ibrahim, 21, said he watched the bomber, whom he described as a young man, walk up to an Iraqi army officer and detonate the nail-packed explosives strapped to his legs about 7:30 a.m.

Two police officials put the death toll at 61 and said 125 others were wounded. Officials at four Baghdad hospitals confirmed the toll.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, a bomb attached to a fuel truck detonated in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Ur last night, killing 10 people, wounding 46 and causing a nearby gas station to catch fire, according to police and hospital officials.

Military recruiting stations and security checkpoints continue to be easy targets for insurgents. The repeated bombings show that despite at least $22 billion in U.S. funding since 2004 for training and equipment, security forces are little better at protecting themselves than they are the population.

The White House said the bombing will not halt either Iraq’s transition to democracy or the U.S. troop withdrawal