Nine Iraqi soldiers killed in suicide bombing

Baghdad, Apr 26: Nine Iraqi soldiers were killed and 15 people were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into an Iraqi army checkpoint north of Baghdad today, police said.

The attack occurred in the town of Khalis, 80 km from Baghdad, in the volatile Diyala province. All those killed were soldiers but civilians were among the wounded, police said.

It was the third bombing causing multiple casualties this week in Diyala, which has a mixed population of Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites.

US and Iraqi forces are engaged in fierce fighting there with entrenched insurgents and al Qaeda militants.

On Monday, nine US soldiers were killed in an attack on a military outpost near Diyala's capital Baquba, one of the worst strikes against US forces since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Yesterday, a suicide bomber killed nine people when he walked into a police station in Balad Ruz in Diyala and detonated a device.

In northern Iraq, at least three people were killed and 13 wounded in three separate blasts today in a town near Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, said a local official who asked not to be identified.

Two truck bombs and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt targeted Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani's Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK) and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the Mosul official said.

At least 10 people were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide car bombing of Barzani's office in Mosul on Monday.

Tens of thousands of US and Iraqi forces have been deployed in Baghdad since February as part of a security crackdown aimed at stopping Iraq from sliding into all-out sectarian civil war.

That crackdown in the capital has prompted insurgents to focus their attacks more on provinces outside the capital.

Reuters>