A car bomb exploded yesterday in the ethnically tense northern oil city of Kirkuk, killing at least three people and wounding 15, police said. A US soldier died of injuries suffered in a land mine explosion south of the capital, the US command said.
The car bomb went off in the industrial district of Kirkuk as pedestrians were passing by, police Captain Farhad Talabani said. Police said it did not appear to have been a suicide attack, and no group claimed responsibility.
Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, is located in one of the richest oil fields in the Middle East and is home to Arab, Kurdish and Turkomen communities, each vying for power there.
Iraqi troops, meanwhile, detonated about 3 tonnes of explosives found near oil fields in southern Iraq, a military spokesman said. The explosives, including 1,282 mines, 628 mortar rounds and 825 artillery shells, were discovered by Oil Protection Services who called the army to remove them, Captain Firas al-Tamimi said.
Al-Tamimi said the explosives were believed to have been planted by former president Saddam Hussein's forces after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- possibly to prevent the oilfields from falling to US-led troops when they drove Iraqi troops from the emirate the following year.
Three other US soldiers were injured in the land mine explosion Monday, which occurred near Mahmoudiya, about 30km south of Baghdad, the US military said. The religiously mixed area is one of the hotbeds of tension between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunnis.
At least 1,756 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,352 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include five military civilians.
Yesterday, police said an explosion struck a US military convoy in eastern Baghdad, damaging one Humvee. The US military made no statement about the attack but said two roadside bombs struck US and Iraqi convoys near Baghdad, injuring six Iraqi soldiers and damaging one Humvee.
A roadside bomb exploded against a US convoy yesterday in Samarra, damaging a Humvee, Iraqi police said. There was no US comment on the report. In Baghdad, gunmen fired at security guards at a health clinic, killing a policeman and wounding a child, officials said.
On Monday, an influential Sunni clerical organization accused Iraqi security forces of detaining, torturing and killing 10 Sunnis in Baghdad. Government officials had no comment, but a doctor at Yarmouk hospital confirmed receiving the bodies, which he said showed signs of abuse. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal.
The Association of Muslim Scholars said members of an Interior Ministry commando brigade detained the men Sunday in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula.
"The men were taken to a detention center where they were tortured, then locked in a container where they suffocated," the association said.
However, the doctor said one of the men was killed and the other nine detained after the troops came under fire on Sunday in Shula. An Interior Ministry official said he had no immediate comment.
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