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KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed
three high-ranking Iraqi police officers in two
separate attacks, among a daily round of bombings
and ambushes targeting U.S. forces and their Iraqi
allies.
A powerful explosion rocked the northern city of
Mosul in late afternoon on Saturday but it remained
unclear what the target or cause was as the U.S.
military sealed off the area.
A car bomb exploded in the centre of the ethnically
divided northern oil capital of Kirkuk, badly
damaging a U.S. Humvee patrol vehicle and wounding
two soldiers and an interpreter, the U.S. military
said. The wounded were in a stable condition.
In southern Baghdad, gunmen assassinated a police
brigadier and a colonel, a police source said, while
west of Kirkuk near the town of Ash Sharqat a police
colonel was one of two officers killed in an ambush.
A second colonel, who reported the incident, was
among three policemen wounded.
In a separate attack near Kirkuk, a policeman was
wounded by a roadside bomb.
In Mosul, where the Sunni Arab insurgency has been
particularly active in the past month, U.S. armoured
vehicles sealed off part of the west of the city and
jets flew overhead after the loud explosion late in
the day.
Earlier in the city, a car bomb exploded near a U.S.
military convoy wounding at least two passers-by,
witnesses and the U.S. army said.
Security officials and civil servants have become
prime targets for insurgents opposed to the U.S.
military occupation and to Iraqis working for the
U.S.-backed authorities. There are fears violence
may increase before an election on January 30.
A bomb damaged an office for election workers in the
town of Zab, southwest of Kirkuk, wounding a
civilian, police said.
Four employees of the Education Ministry were
wounded when the bus taking them to work in Baghdad
was raked by gunfire.
A civilian motorist was wounded on the main highway
between Hilla and Kerbala, south of the capital,
when a roadside bomb went off, missing a convoy of
National Guards, police said.
KIRKUK TENSIONS
In Kirkuk, U.S. troops and Iraqi police sealed off
the area where the car bomb exploded. Master
Sergeant Robert Powell, a spokesman for U.S. forces
in the area, said it was believed to have been
remotely detonated and not a suicide bomb attack.
Close to the same spot, the provincial governor of
Kirkuk, an ethnic Kurd, survived an assassination
attempt when a car bomb exploded near his convoy a
month ago. At least 16 people were wounded in that
attack on November 11.
Kirkuk is the centre of Iraq's northern oil
industry. Tension has risen between Arabs, Kurds and
Turkish-speaking Turkmen since Saddam Hussein was
toppled last year.
At Ash Sharqat, Colonel Mohammed Abed said from his
hospital bed that a fellow police colonel and
another officer were killed in the ambush which left
Abed and two others wounded.
"They blocked our way, shot us and took our cars,"
he said.
A police source said the brigadier and colonel
killed in Baghdad both worked at the Interior
Ministry.
A woman who survived the attack on the Education
Ministry bus said in hospital: "We were on our way
to work. We go the same way every day." Two men and
two women were wounded.
The yellow, unmarked city bus was riddled with
bullet holes.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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