A suicide truck bomber attacked a police station in one of Iraq's major oil hubs on Saturday, killing at least seven people and wounding 13, police said. Elsewhere, 12 suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq members died and 13 were detained in American raids, the U.S. military said.
The incident in Beiji was at least the third deadly suicide attack in 24 hours in Iraq and came a day after a key oil pipeline in the northern city was hit by a bomb. The bomber on Saturday approached the police station in an explosives-laden truck about three miles north of the city center, a police official said. The official said five policemen and two civilians were killed in the explosion, which damaged nearby homes and sent shards of glass flying through the air.
In one American operation Saturday outside Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen left a building believed to be an al-Qaeda hideout and went into a near palm grove as U.S. forces approached, the U.S. military said. Ten suspects died in an ensuing gunfight and airstrike, the U.S. said. Afterward, troops found machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and sandbags filled with explosives. Two men were detained, the statement said.
In a second raid outside Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, American troops moving against a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq member killed one suspect and discovered an ammunition cache, the military statement said. Two other raids further north left one suspected fighter dead and 11 detained, the military said.
