Many Killed in New Car Bomb

Many Killed in New Car Bomb

Seventeen people have been killed and 16 wounded in a car bomb attack in the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad, police and medical sources have said.


"Seventeen people were killed, including three policemen, and 16 wounded, three of them also policemen, in the explosion of a car bomb at 8.30am (0530 GMT)," said the head of the general hospital in the nearby city of Hilla on Saturday.


Police Lieutenant Muhammad Tamimi said the bomb, near a hospital and local council building, was not a "suicide attack".


"Most of the victims are people who were heading to the hospital or to the headquarters of the local council," he said.


Musayyib is a mixed Shia-Sunni town about 100km south of Baghdad.


Judge assassinated


Separately, a prominent Iraqi judge was assassinated by two fighters on a motorcycle in the southern port city of Basra, police said.


Taha al-Basri, a former chief judge at Basra's highest criminal court, was gunned down on Saturday as he drove to work, said Lieutenant Colonel Karim al-Zaidi, an information officer at Basra's police headquarters.


The judge's bodyguard was seriously wounded in the attack and was taken to a hospital, al-Zaidi said.


Also on Saturday, Iraqi police said they discovered the bodies of six men dressed in Iraqi National Guard uniforms dumped on a main highway near the northern city of Mosul.


The men had been shot in the chest and head, said Lt Ali Husain from the Iraqi police. They were found in the area of Intisar, east of Mosul.


Two US troops die


Two US troops were killed in separate incidents while on patrols in Iraq, the US military announced early Saturday.


A marine serving with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed Friday while on a security operation in Anbar province west of Baghdad, said a military statement.


A soldier assigned to the same force was killed in a "non-hostile vehicle accident" in Babil province to the south of the capital.


The military said both incidents were being investigated, but no other details were given.


About 1500 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003, US-led invasion, according to latest US figures.




PHOTO CAPTION


An Iraqi policeman views the scene of a car bombing that killed at least three people in central Baghdad, February 10, 2005. (REUTERS)

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