Two suicide car bombings in towns north of Baghdad killed five Iraqi policemen and a firefighter, while at least 16 Iraqis were wounded after gunmen opened fire on officers trying to evacuate the injured from one of the blasts.
In one attack in Baghdad, a suicide car bomb targeting an American convoy in Baghdad missed and instead killed a six-year-old girl and injured another five Iraqis in Baghdad, The AP reported. Another Iraqi army soldier was killed and three were wounded by a car bomb in Baghdad's western Radwanya district, hospital officials said.
North of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber blew himself up in eastern Samarra's Khadra neighborhood at about 9 a.m. as an American-Iraqi patrol was passing by, police Lt. Qassim Mohammed said. As emergency crews gathered a roadside bomb detonated and gunmen in two speeding cars also opened fire on the crowd, leading to a more than 30 minute exchange of gunfire. Three policemen were killed in the explosion and a total of 16 civilians were injured, Mohammed said.
In Saddam Hussein's nearby hometown of Tikrit, another suicide car bomber killed two Iraqi police officers and injured six civilians when he blew himself up after being surrounded by security forces, police Lt.Col. Tariq Alwan Al-Jibouri said. A fire fighter died he said.
Meanwhile, a senior U.S. diplomat survived on Monday when a suicide car bomber struck a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad, several police sources said. The diplomat's identity was unclear. A spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni Muslim grouping, said a senior U.S. official had just left its compound in western Baghdad when the explosion took place.
