At least 34 killed, dozens injured across Iraq (2nd Roundup)

Mar 24, 2007, 13:55 GMT

Baghdad - At least 34 people were killed and dozens were wounded in shootings and blasts Saturday across the conflict-ravaged Iraq, police and media sources said.

More than 20 were killed and 19 wounded, including many policemen, when a truck bomb targeted Doura police station in southern Baghdad, the sources said. The police station was severely damaged.

Police said five people had been killed in a car bomb blast near a Muslim Shiite mosque in the city of Iskandariya, 40 kilometres south of Baghdad. The mosque collapsed, causing severe damaged to the civil defence centre in the area.

Witnesses in Suwayrah city, 50 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, said a US army patrol opened fire on a car, killing a former Iraqi senior army officer and his driver and wounding a third Iraqi.

At least two Iraqi army soldiers were shot dead and three wounded in an attack in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said. Armed men opened fire at dawn on an army vehicle in Riyad district, north-west of Kirkuk, senior army officer Khalil al-Zobai said.

A US-led coalition forces air strike killed three terrorist suspects as another blew himself up, and 12 other suspects were captured in operations targeting an al-Qaeda network and foreign fighter facilitators, the US military reported.

The four suspects who died had been the object of an operation by coalition forces in a rural area southeast of Rutbah, a desert town 350 kilometres west of Baghdad. Weapons caches and explosives were also discovered during a search.

In Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, coalition forces captured nine suspected terrorists with alleged involvement in foreign fighter facilitation and weapons distribution, the US military said.

Two more suspects were captured in Baghdad with reported ties to vehicle-borne improvised explosive device manufacturing, while a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq courier was detained east of Balad.