Iraqi Police Men Killed by Car Bombs
13/06/2005| IslamWeb
At least five Iraqi police officers have been killed in two separate car bomb attacks.
The first car bomb attack struck a joint US-Iraqi patrol north of Baghdad, killing three Iraqi police officers and wounding five, police said on Monday.
A huge blast rocked eastern Samarra's al-Khadra neighbourhood at about 9am as an American-Iraqi patrol was passing by, police Lieutenant Qasim Muhammad said.
The US military had no immediate details about the attack in Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad.
Three police officers were killed in the explosion and five others were wounded, Muhammad said. Five Iraqi civilians were also injured in the blast that sparked a fierce gun battle that lasted 30 minutes.
The injured were transferred to Samarra general hospital, Aljazeera learned.
Tikrit blast
In Tikrit, a car bomber blew up his vehicle next to an Iraqi police patrol, killing two police officers and wounding 12 people, most of them civilians, police said.
Lieutenant Faris Ahmad, who was wounded in the blast, said the bomber pulled up his white Toyota beside the police patrol as it moved through the centre of city near Saddam Hussein's hometown before detonating his explosives.
Of the 12 wounded, seven were civilians and five were police, he said.
Dead bodies found
The bodies of 20 people, bound and shot in the head, have been found on a military firing range in the eastern suburbs of Baghdad.
A police source said on Sunday that the victims' identities are unclear and the bodies appeared to have been there for some time. They were found on Friday and are now in a Baghdad mortuary, another police officer said.
A leading Sunni organisation, the Association of Muslim Scholars, issued a statement on Sunday, however, saying that 30 bodies had been found at the firing range.
It said one body was identified as belonging to a Sunni Arab, but it gave no details.
In a separate find in Baghdad, three bodies were found with their hands tied to behind their backs. No further details are as yet available.
US soldiers killed
Also, the US military has announced the deaths of four American soldiers, killed in two separate roadside bomb attacks during combat operations west of Baghdad.
It said the first two soldiers were killed on Saturday when a bomb exploded near their vehicle during combat operations 19km outside Amiriyah, about 40km west of Baghdad.
The soldiers were assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force.
The other two soldiers, who were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, were killed on Saturday when their vehicle struck a bomb during a combat operation about 29km southwest of Taqaddum, west of Baghdad.
As of Sunday, at least 1701 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.
Spate of attacks
In the town of al-Shirqat, south of the northern city of Mosul, a truck driver and his assistant were killed when an explosive device, which was planted amid trucks transporting supplies to US troops, went off, Aljazeera reported.
And in al-Siniyah area, west of the Iraqi town of Baiji, three Iraqi soldiers were wounded when their patrol was targeted, Aljazeera added.
In the west of the country, US forces said they killed about "40 insurgents" in air strikes on Saturday near Qaim on the Syrian border, a stronghold of anti-US rebels.
At the scene on Sunday, it was hard to determine the number and identity of casualties. Local people denied fighters had been there but prevented journalists from visited some destroyed houses.
Also in the west, three civilian drivers were killed on the main desert highway between Baghdad and Jordan when rebels and US troops exchanged fire, a local mayor said.
Seven civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded close to an Iraqi army patrol near Falluja, 50km west of Baghdad, which US forces wrested from Sunni fighters last November.
Separately near Falluja, a police captain, Saadi Abed al-Jumaili, was shot dead as he left his home on Sunday morning, relatives said.
Furthermore, three mortar rounds landed close to a house in Baghdad where the funeral was taking place of the mother of a senior Iraqi army commander, Major-General Rashid Fleya, police said.
One mourner was killed and two wounded. When police were trying to find the assailants, a bomb went off that wounded 10 people, five of them policemen, the police source added.
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