BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up Thursday in a crowd of police recruits in northwestern Iraq, killing at least 16 men and wounding 14 others, an official said.

The blast occurred in Sinjar, a town near the Syrian border that was the site of the deadliest attack of the war — a series of suicide truck bombings that killed an estimated 500 people.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the latest attack. But it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, underscoring Iraqi claims that insurgents have fled to remote areas to escape a U.S.-Iraqi offensive under way in Mosul, about 74 miles east of Sinjar.