At least 45 including US soldier killed in Iraq violence
Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk

MOSUL (Iraq): At least 45 people died in violence in Iraq including a US soldier.

In the main northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge slipped into a building housing the provincial anti-corruption department and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two of his guards.

Attackers struck again hours later opening fire on the procession bearing Kachmoula's coffin as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14, hospital sources said.

Separately, two unidentified bodies shot in the chest and head were found in the city, which has become a new front for the insurgency since November.

In another flashpoint town, gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba killing at least four police and wounding two as a truck bomb rammed into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack wounding 17 people, a police official said.

Of Insurgents

Four insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight.

In the capital, 24 Iraqi insurgents were killed and six coalition soldiers wounded in a firefight, the US military said.

In the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, a US soldier was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol, the US military said.

An Iraqi army commander from the Turkmen minority, General Mohsen Hazaa Bayram al-Bayati, was also seriously wounded in the ethnically divided city in an apparent assassination attempt, officers said.

In the key refinery town of Baiji, a Turkish driver traveling in a convoy escorted by the US military was killed by small arms fire, said Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Salah.

A policeman was killed and three others wounded in a similar attack in Samarra, while the bodies of an Iraqi army officer and his cousin were found in the same area, according to police.

In the main southern city of Basra, a civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a police patrol, police said.

Despite the continuing high casualty toll from insurgent violence two years after Washington hailed Iraq's liberation, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that major progress had nonetheless been achieved.●