A car bomb exploded at a police station yesterday near a base in western Iraq used by US Marines, killing at least 10 Iraqi policemen and wounding 48 other people, officials said.
The explosion occurred outside the gates of Marine Camp Al Asad in Baghdadi, 230km west of Baghdad. The US military confirmed it was a suicide car bombing and said there were no Americans among the casualties. A hospital official in nearby Haditha said there were at least eight dead and 48 wounded.
The blast came hours after the US military arrested an aide to Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and five others during raids on a safe house in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, officials said. The aide had risen to prominence in recent weeks as other al-Zarqawi staff had been killed, according to intelligence sources.
The 1:30am raid in southern Fallujah targeted a site being used as a safe haven by al-Zarqawi's inner circle, according to a military statement.
US forces have stepped up operations in Fallujah in a bid to root out al-Zarqawi's terror group, Tawhid and Jihad, which is believed to operate from there. The group has been blamed for numerous suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including recent twin blasts inside Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the US and Iraqi leadership.
Among the most shocking of the kidnappings was that of Margaret Hassan, an aid worker with joint British, Irish and Iraqi citizenship who has spent nearly half her life delivering food and medicine in Iraq. Hassan, who is married to an Iraqi, was seized on Tuesday in western Baghdad as she rode to work in her car.
On Friday, Hassan appeared in a wrenching televised statement, begging for her life and urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair to withdraw his country's troops.
The 59-year-old woman's statement puts new political pressure on Blair's government shortly after it agreed to a US request to transfer 850 British soldiers from southern Iraq to the Baghdad area to free up US forces for new offensives against insurgents.
"Please help me, please help me," said Hassan, who heads CARE International's operations in Iraq, in a grainy videotape broadcast by al-Jazeera TV. "This might be my last hours. Please help me. Please, the British people, ask Mr. Blair to take the troops out of Iraq, and not to bring them here to Baghdad."
Yesterday, CARE International secretary-general Denis Caillaux made an appeal on al-Jazeera to Hassan's kidnappers to release her.
In other developments yesterday, a roadside bomb detonated near a US military patrol along the highway leading to Baghdad Airport, wounding six soldiers, the US military said. A suicide driver also detonated a car bomb near an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint south of Samarra, killing four guardsmen and injuring six, police said.
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