A car bomb and a shooting killed two Iraqi policemen and the driver of a bus carrying government employees to work in Baghdad yesterday, police said. The US command reported one US soldier was killed and another was wounded in northern Iraq.
Militants also bombed an Iraqi oil pipeline south of Baghdad on Sunday night in an attack that closed down a power station. And new details emerged about a bomb-making factory hidden in a religious school near a major Sunni Muslim shrine in Baghdad.
The car bomb exploded near a police patrol on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad yesterday morning, killing two policemen and wounding 12 Iraqis: Five policemen and seven civilians, police Lieutenant Ahmed Qassim said.
PHOTO: EPA
In western Baghdad, suspected insurgents stopped a bus carrying Higher Education Ministry employees to work, fatally shooting the driver and wounding a policeman who was working on the bus as a guard, police Captain Jamil Hussein said.
Insurgents often try to prevent Iraqis from cooperating with their country's new government by attacking government workers and killing men who have been recruited into Iraq's military and police forces.
The US soldier died on Sunday near Tal Afar while US troops were helping Iraqi forces attack a building where insurgents were firing at civilians and soldiers, the US command said. One US soldier was wounded in the clash near Tal Afar, 420km northwest of Baghdad and about 150km east of the Syrian border, the statement said.
The bombing of the pipeline occurred late on Sunday near Musayyib, about 60km south of Baghdad. The pipeline carries oil from the Dora refinery in Baghdad to Musayyib power station, and police Colonel Ahmed Mijwal said the attack had closed the station.
On Sunday, the US military reported that one suspected insurgent was killed and one wounded that day when their bomb making factory exploded in the basement of one of Baghdad's two more important Sunni shrines.
Yesterday, the US command and Iraqi forces said an investigation had found that one insurgent died and two were wounded in the basement of the partially built al-Qadiriya religious school located next door to the shrine when the bombs they were making exploded.
Years ago, former president Saddam Hussein's government began building the school near the tomb of Abdul-Qadir al-Quilani and it is visited by thousands of Sunni Muslims from around the region, but the school was left unfinished after the US-led invasion.
Weapons have been found hidden in other mosques in Baghdad, but US and Iraqi forces rarely risk offending Iraq's many religious Muslims by searching such sites.
Meanwhile, a top Shiite official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said incoming Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, would probably not meet the target of presenting his Cabinet to parliament tomorrow because of differences over who will run the ministries of interior and defense.
Those posts control the police and army, and coalition officials have insisted that the new ministers have no ties to militias.
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