Iraq explosion kills 12 trying to dismantle decoy bomb
Policemen were dismantling what appeared to be a decoy roadside bomb near Kirkuk today when another bomb exploded, killing 12 officers and injuring three others, police said.
Police Brigadier Sarhat Qadir said the explosion occurred 10 miles north west of Kirkuk as a group of police were trying to cordon off the area. He said officials believed the bomb being dismantled was a decoy to draw in more police before the second bomb exploded.
In Baghdad, insurgents hit an American fuel-supply convoy, leaving a tanker truck engulfed in flames that sent smoke rising high over the city. Twin blasts targeted the convoy of two US Humvees and a fuel tanker as it made its way through an eastern Baghdad neighbourhood, witnesses at the scene said. The truck burned violently and sent up a large plume of black smoke visible across Baghdad.
It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any casualties. The US military had no immediate comment.
The violence came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s top deputy, Robert Zoellick, arrived in the war-battered capital today on a one-day visit following a trip to Iraq by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday.
“Dimensions of our Iraqi strategy have to have political and economic - complete reconstruction – components as well as a military component,” Zoellick told reporters while travelling to the Middle East.
His trip, like Rumsfeld’s, was kept secret for security reasons until his entourage landed in Baghdad.
