Bayji police station attack leaves 23 dead, 73 injured (Roundup)

Aug 22, 2007, 14:47 GMT

Baghdad - At least 23 Iraqis were killed and 73 others wounded on Wednesday when a suicide bomber targeted the Bayji city police station, the Iraqi police said.

The blast damaged the police station's new headquarters, senior officer Hasan Ahmed from Salahaddin province police told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.

The building is located in a residential area, resulting in many civilian casualties in the attack.

Bayji, a city in Salahaddin province located 200 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad, has frequently been the scene of attacks.

Security forces sealed off the site, while ambulances rushed the wounded to nearby hospitals.

Earlier on Wednesday another attack left two Iraqi workers dead and five others wounded in Talafar in the province of Nineveh, the independent Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq reported.

Voices of Iraq quoted Talafar police officer Nejm Abdullah as saying an explosive device went off in Alw village, five kilometres from Talafar, targeting Iraqi workers while they were setting up water pipes and networks.

Talafar is 70 kilometres east of the Syrian border.

In another development, 14 US soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in northern Iraq, a US military statement said.

The initial indications were that the helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction. There were no indications that it had been fired at, but the crash was being investigated, the statement said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces Wednesday reportedly captured a number of armed men in connection with the killing of the Muthanna province governor Muhammad Ali al-Hassani two days earlier.

Muthanna police department Brigadier Kadhem al-Jayashi said security forces arrested some members of the armed group who plotted the killing of al-Hassani on Monday. An explosive charge was detonated as he was leaving the city of al-Rumeitha.

Al-Jayashi said security forces were still hunting down the remaining suspects, adding that further details would be revealed in the coming days.

Al-Hassani, who had been governor of Muthanna after the collapse of the former regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, was a member of the Badr Organization, once the military wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) of Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.

The assassination came 10 days after another attack in which Diwaniyah province governor Khalil Jalil Hamza, also a member of SIIC, was killed when his motorcade was struck by an explosive device.

In other news, emergency forces in Kirkuk stormed Wednesday the premises of the Arab Consultative Council (ACC) in Kirkuk and the Kirkuk Cultural Centre, arresting the six guards of the two buildings. The forces also detained senior officers at the centre.

The Kirkuk Cultural Centre, founded in 2007, provides many social services and humanitarian aide to underprivileged people. It is located in the Arab Advisory Council, a body that includes key Sunni and Shiite politicians and academics in the city.

No further details were immediately available as to the reason for the raid and arrests.

Separately, the mayor of a village near the northern city of Kirkuk was shot dead on Wednesday morning by unidentified gunmen, Voices of Iraq reported citing a police source.