Captured bomber had a Syrian passport

A US general said the one attacker captured in the bombings that killed over 40 people in Baghdad yesterday had a Syrian passport, fuelling suspicions that foreign fighters were behind a rising tide of violence.

Brigadier General Mark Hertling of the US Army's 1st Armoured Division said police shot and wounded the man when he got out of a car and tried to hurl a grenade at a Baghdad police station. The car carried three mortar rounds and was packed with TNT.

"He's a foreign fighter. He had a Syrian passport and the policemen claim that as he was shot and fell he said he was Syrian," Hertling told a news conference.

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Ahmad Ibrahim told the news conference the wounded attacker was now unconscious in hospital.

Hertling said suicide attacks were not typical of supporters of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who have been blamed by the US military for most of guerrilla attacks on its troops and other targets in Iraq.

"There are indicators that certainly these attacks have a mode of operation of foreign fighters," Hertling said, adding that possible foreign links among the attackers would be investigated in the days to come.

Thirty-four people were killed, including eight police officers, in the suicide attacks on three other police stations and the Red Cross headquarters, Ibrahim said. Another 224 people were wounded, 65 of them police.

One of the bombers, driving an Iraqi police car and wearing a police uniform, was admitted to a police compound before blowing himself and the station up, Hertling said.