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Suicide Bomber Kills 7 At Iraqi Police Station

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By HAMID AHMED, The Associated Press

Published: December 9, 2007

BAGHDAD - A suicide truck bomber attacked a police station in one of Iraq's major oil hubs Saturday, killing at least seven people and injuring 13 in a neighborhood home to many refinery workers and engineers, police said.

Elsewhere, 12 suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants were killed and 13 detained in American raids, including one that ended with an airstrike on a palm grove where gunmen had taken up position, the U.S. military said.

The incident in Beiji was at least the third deadly suicide attack in 24 hours in Iraq and came a day after a key oil pipeline in the northern city was struck by an insurgent bomb.

The bomber on Saturday approached the police station in an explosives-laden truck about three miles north of the city center, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the attack.

The official said five policemen and two civilians were killed in the blast, which damaged nearby homes and sent shards of glass flying through the air.

"The windows of my house shattered and three of my family members were injured," said Jassim Salih, who lives nearby.

Another witness, Falih Salim, said he rushed toward the area after hearing the explosion and saw the burned bodies of two guards.

"The scene was so horrible that I ran away," Salim said.

Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, houses northern Iraq's largest oil refinery, and serves as a key transfer point for crude being exported out of the country. Attacks on the Kirkuk-Beiji pipeline cluster have been infrequent in recent months, with some 300 U.S. soldiers and more than 2,000 Iraqi troops guarding the zone.

Violence is generally down in Iraq, largely because of an influx of U.S. troops that began last February, the rise of the anti-al-Qaida groups and a freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army, ordered by the militia's leader, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

But with the loss of many former sanctuaries, al-Qaida groups are thought to be moving to more remote regions.

In one U.S. operation Saturday outside Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen left a building thought to be an al-Qaida hideout and went into a palm grove as U.S. forces approached, the U.S. military said.

Ten suspected militants were killed in an ensuing gunfight and airstrike, the United States said. Afterward, troops found machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and sandbags filled with explosives. Two men were detained, the statement said.

In a second raid outside Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, U.S. forces moving against a suspected al-Qaida in Iraq member thought to be linked to senior members of the group killed one suspect and discovered an ammunition cache, the military statement said.

Two other raids further north - one in Mosul and one in Samarra - left one suspected militant dead and 11 detained, the military said.

In the southeastern city of Kut, 100 miles from Baghdad, a rocket landed on the home of a senior member of the local Sadrist bloc of Shiite politicians, killing him, his wife and their two children, police said.

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