Bomb in Iraq kills 14 policemen, wrecks station

Baghdad, June 11: A suicide truck bomb killed 14 policemen and wounded 42 at a police station north of Baghdad in the latest assault by insurgents on Iraq's security forces, police said.

They said the bomb largely destroyed the station in the village of Albu-Ajeel in Salahaddin province. Many police were initially trapped under rubble, including one officer who called for help on his mobile phone.

Among the dead were five officers, including two colonels, police in the nearby provincial capital Tikrit said. More than 30 police were among some 50 people wounded.

Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other militant groups have stepped up attacks on Iraq's security forces across the country in recent weeks, seeking to undermine a four-month-old US-backed security plan in Baghdad and nearby regions.

The crackdown has driven some militants out of Baghdad into surrounding towns and cities, especially into Diyala province just north of Baghdad but also Salahaddin, where they have launched attacks on civilians and US and Iraqi forces.

The top US general in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said today the crackdown would only get into full swing in the ''next week or so'' with the arrival of the last of five additional US brigades that will bring the total number of US reinforcements in Iraq to 28,000.

''June 15 is the time when, no kidding, they are ready to go,'' Major-General Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division-Central, told reporters.

Thousands of US troops have been deployed in Baghdad, leaving their huge bases on the city outskirts to set up combat outposts in neighbourhoods in what is seen as a last-ditch bid to curb sectarian violence and avert civil war.

The outgoing US commander of the US-led effort to train Iraqi soldiers and police, Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, said the initial deployment of Iraqi units from outside Baghdad for the operation had been ''frankly disastrous''.

Trapped Under Rubble

''Not enough of them decided to deploy, they left more than half the unit behind. But we did not prep them very well. We asked them to go to Baghdad, but we didn't tell them why very well, we didn't tell them how long they would be there.'' New measures had since been put in place -- the soldiers were now told how long they would be deployed for in Baghdad and received additional training and an allowance.

Dempsey also said the Iraqi security forces were making great progress in key areas and he expected them to be able to take over control of at least 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces from US-led coalition forces by year's end.

A prerequisite for the withdrawal of US troops is standing up Iraq's security forces, which have been rebuilt from scratch since the US-led invasion in 2003 and are still heavily dependent on US firepower and logistical support.

Television pictures of the aftermath of the suicide truck bombing in Albu-Ajeel, 175 km north of Baghdad, showed the burned-out hulks of overturned police vehicles and piles of debris and rubble around the police station. Several sections of the building had completely collapsed.

While several police and hospital sources said only one truck bomb was used, another police official said a second vehicle, a car, was believed to have exploded just after the truck bomb detonated.

One police official said an officer who was trapped under rubble made a frantic call to the Tikrit police operations room.

''We are under the building, which collapsed on us. We think it was a car bomb,'' the official quoted the officer as saying.

The attack on the police station came a day after a suicide truck bomber killed 12 soldiers at an Iraqi army checkpoint south of Baghdad.

Reuters>