Police chief among five killed in Iraq bomb
Bombers killed three Iraqi national guardsmen, a police chief and one of his officers today in the militants’ unrelenting attacks against the country’s security forces.
Also, two American soldiers were killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Monday night, while two US Marines died of wounds received in fighting in Anbar Province west of Baghdad, the military said.
One of the Marines died during the Monday engagement the second died today from his wounds in that fighting.
The national guardsmen were killed when a car bomb hit their post north of Baquoba. Four guardsmen were wounded, the US military said.
A truck bomb last Wednesday targeted a police recruiting centre in Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, where hundreds of job applicants were gathered. It killed 70 people.
“The continued targeting of Iraqi security force personnel … undermines the security of all Iraqis and will only quicken the resolve of Iraqi security forces to provide a safe and secure environment,” said Major Neal O’Brien, a U.S. Army spokesman.
In today’s first bomb attack, an Iraqi police pickup truck was destroyed.
One of the dead was Colonel Mouyad Mohammed Bashar, who was chief of al-Mamoun police station.
Police in Iraq have repeatedly been targeted by insurgents pressing a campaign to destabilise the interim government. The guerrillas see police as collaborators with American coalition forces.
From April 2003 to May 2004, 710 Iraqi police were killed out of a total force of 130,000 officer.
In northern Iraq, saboteurs bombed an oil pipeline north-east of the town or Beiji today in the latest attack on the nation’s infrastructure, the US military said.
