Four Iraqi national guards and a US contractor were killed and 89 people wounded in two mortar attacks in and around Baghdad yesterday in the latest deadly strike against US and Iraqi forces, officials said.
Unknown assailants fired mortars on the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Mashahda, a town about 40km north of Baghdad. The interior ministry said four people were killed and 82 wounded.
The US-led military confirmed an attack on the facility but said no US soldiers had been hurt.
US Army helicopters were used to shuttle the wounded to a military hospital, it said in a statement.
The US-led military is another favorite target and it also suffered a direct hit on a compound in Baghdad that left one US contractor dead and seven people injured, including a US soldier, a spokesman said.
"We had mortar and RPG [rocket propelled grenade] fire that hit inside our compound this morning," a military spokesman said.
The US soldier and one of the six Iraqi civilians injured in the attack were in a serious but stable condition, he said.
The Iraqis nationals had all been working in the compound.
The attacks came less than a week after bombings killed five people in the Green Zone, the previously impregnable compound in Baghdad housing Iraqi government offices and the US embassy.
Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of the US oil services giant Halliburton, confirmed its employee was killed, bringing to 54 the number of deaths suffered by Halliburton and its subcontractors in Iraq.
"KBR regrets to confirm the death of one employee who was killed today as a result of injuries sustained during a mortar attack near Baghdad," it said.
KBR provides the army with a vast range of services in the Middle East region under a US$4.4 billion contract.
Meanwhile, the director of CARE International's operation in Iraq was kidnapped yesterday in Baghdad, the organization said.
Margaret Hassan, said to be a British-born Iraqi national, was abducted in the capital at 7:30am, CARE International UK said in a statement released in London.
"As of now we are unaware of the motives for the abduction," the statement said. "As far as we know, Margaret is unharmed."
Al-Jazeera television meanwhile reported that an ``armed Iraqi group'' said it had kidnapped Hassan. The station said it had obtained a tape showing Hassan as well as pictures of her passport, credit and ID cards. It did not specify the armed group nor say whether any demands were made.
The tape showed Hassan wearing a white blouse in a room with no other visible markings. She appeared to be speaking but without audio. No one else appeared in the brief video clip aired by the station.
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