Nine people died and 22 were injured on Thursday in a suicide truck bomb attack on a police station near the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq, local police said. "The bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the building after police opened fire on him," Brigadier General Mohammed al-Waga told AFP. He added five police officers were among the victims in the attack in Rabiaa, which also left 15 police injured.
In the capital's eastern Sadr City district, a bomb beneath a parked car went off at lunchtime outside a falafel restaurant, police reported. At least three people died and eight were injured, said a police officer.
The new deaths came as U.S. military casualties rose toward a four-year death toll of 3,500, with 22 dead reported for the first six days of June, almost double that of June 2006.
The U.S. army reported four American troops died in separate incidents Tuesday and Wednesday. That lifted the U.S. death toll in four years of war to 3,498, the AP reported. And it raised the average rate of American soldiers deaths to about four per day in June, compared with two a day in June 2006.
