Nine soldiers killed in Iraq suicide blast
At least nine soldiers were killed today in a suicide car bomb attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Iraq.
The attack at about 9am local time in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad also wounded 10 Iraqi soldiers and five civilians, a police officer said .
The city is located in Diyala province, which has seen some of the worst violence recently as mostly Sunni militants are believed to have fled to the area since US and Iraqi troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad on February 14.
Yesterday, four Iraqi police officers were killed when a suicide bomber struck a police station in the Diyala city of Balad Ruz, 45 miles north-east of Baghdad.
Two days earlier, a double-suicide bombing in which dump trucks blasted a paratrooper outpost in the province, causing the two-storey building to collapse, killing nine US troops. An al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility.
In other violence today, two suicide bombers attacked an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, killing three of its guards and wounding five, police said.
