Two Iraqi police commandos were killed and three wounded when security forces clashed with insurgents in western Baghdad yesterday, police said.
The fighting broke out in Baghdad's Gazaliya district which is known as a bastion of the Sunni insurgency.
Insurgents killed three Iraqis in two separate attacks elsewhere in Baghdad yesterday, while in Fallujah, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb, an army officer said.
A bomb also went off at a famous monument in a Baghdad square honoring the 8th-century founder of Baghdad to whom former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had often compared himself. The blast, which toppled the bust of Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour but caused no injuries, appeared to be a jab at the former dictator.
Meanwhile, Iraqis continued to await the outcome of last Saturday's constitutional referendum, as the slower than expected vote counting continued.
Questions about the integrity of the vote and physical barriers to getting marked ballots to the capital mean final results from the landmark referendum won't be announced until today at the earliest, officials said.
The returns have raised questions over the possibility of irregularities in the balloting -- and have prompted an audit into an irregularly high number of "yes" votes.
The audit Iraq's Electoral Commission is conducting in the referendum will examine results that show an oddly high number of "yes" votes -- apparently including in two crucial provinces that could determine the outcome of the vote, Ninevah and Diyala.
But Sunni Arab leaders who oppose the charter have claimed the vote was fixed in Ninevah and Diyala and elsewhere to swing them to a "yes" after initial results reported by provincial officials indicated the constitution had passed.
Shortly before Saddam's trial was to begin in Baghdad's highly secured Green Zone yesterday, suspected insurgents shot and killed Hakim Mirza, one of several municipal directors of the capital, and his driver, in the southern neighborhood of Dora, said police Major Falah Al-Mohamadawi.
Elsewhere, gunmen shot and killed Muhsin Chitheer in front of his home in the southwestern section of Baghdad known as al-I'alam, a police officer said. Chitheer had been a lieutenant colonel in the old Iraqi army.
The bombing of the famous monument honoring Al-Mansour knocked his bust off the top of a 10m triangular monument, said police Captain Qassim Hussein.
The attack occurred at 1:30am in a northwestern area named after Al-Mansour, a caliph, or supreme religious leader of the Islamic empire, who built Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris River in 762.
Hussein said it was not immediately known who had launched the attack or what motivated it.
In other violence in Iraq, a roadside bomb hit a US Army patrol late Tuesday night, killing one soldier and wounding two near Iskandariyah, 50km south of Baghdad, the military said.
A British soldier also was killed by a roadside bomb late Tuesday night in Basra, Britain's Ministry of Defense said.
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