A suicide car bomb attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint in northern Iraq killed at least nine troops Thursday, police said. According to the AP, the attack occurred at about 9 a.m. in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, a police officer said. Ten Iraqi troops and five civilians were hurt, the officer said.
In other violence on Thursday, two suicide bombers attacked an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, killing three of its guards and injuring five, police said. The attack occurred at about 8 a.m. in Zumar, a town that is 45 miles west of Mosul, the capital of Ninevah province.
Meanwhile, a senior American officer has been charged with nine offenses, including aiding the enemy, the military said Thursday. Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele was accused of giving "aid to the enemy" by providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees.
Steele was the commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention center on the western outskirts of Baghdad, when the offenses allegedly occurred between October 2005 and February, military spokesman Lt. Col. James Hutton said.
Steele was being held in Kuwait pending a grand jury investigation, Hutton said.
