Meanwhile, in Iraq, a car bomb detonated outside a hospital in Mahmoudiya, a town about 30km south of Baghdad, yesterday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Iraqi army Captain Ibrahim Abdeallah said the suicide bomber was targeting US military vehicles parked near the hospital.
In central Iraq, unidentified gunmen in separate attacks killed a former army colonel yesterday and ambushed a local leader of a Sunni Muslim political party, the day after a senior tribal was assassinated, Iraqi officials said.
A bodyguard for the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party branch in Khalis, 8km north of Baghdad, was wounded in a drive-by shooting yesterday. In a similar shooting, former Iraqi army Colonel Hussein Mohammed was killed late on Wednesday in Baqouba, said Ahmed Fouad, a morgue attendant.



