An "indirect fire" attack on a major U.S. military base in the Iraqi capital Baghdad overnight killed two coalition forces members and injured 38 others, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
According to Reuters, a Western security contractor at the Camp Victory military base had said he heard nine mortar rounds being fired and four blasts inside the perimeter after dusk on Wednesday. The number of casualties is the highest in months from an attack on Camp Victory, the U.S. military's headquarters near Baghdad airport.
In a statement, the military said two "third country nationals" had also been wounded. Besides U.S. troops, small numbers of soldiers from other countries are based at Camp Victory.
On Thursday, a car bomb ripped through the convoy of a senior Iraqi police official in the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more, officials said. Brigadier General Salah Ahmed Faqih, chief of the province's traffic police, survived but two of his bodyguards burned to death in one of seven cars destroyed by the powerful blast, police said. Six civilians were also killed.
The attack happened at 3:30 pm as Faqih was leaving work in a four-vehicle convoy in the busy Al-Shorjah district of the city, Brigadier General Burhan Habib Tayyib told AFP.
