Gunmen attack police as Red Cross visit Saddam

GUNMEN attacked Iraqi police in two northern Iraqi cities, sparking clashes that killed two attackers as jailed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein wrote a letter to his family for the international Red Cross to deliver, officials said.

The message was handed over to a two-member Red Cross delegation that visited Saddam at an undisclosed location in Iraq on Saturday, spokeswoman Nada Doumani said. It was the first time the Geneva-based body checked on Saddam since his arrest in an underground bunker in Tikrit on December 13.

The anti-occupation insurgency, believed led by Saddam loyalists, has persisted despite the arrest of the ousted Iraqi leader. Guerrillas have increasingly targeted Iraqi security officers, raising concerns over police readiness to face the insurgency once the Americans hand power over to the Iraqis on June 30.

A bomb went off yesterday near a US convoy on a road south of Fallujah, causing some injuries, according to Ismail Fakhri, a farmer who said he witnessed the blast US troops blocked the road leading to the area of the attack. The US command in Baghdad had no report on the incident.

In northern Iraq, gunmen opened fire on the house of the Mosul police chief on Saturday, police colonel Abdul-Azal Hazim said. The police returned fire and killed one attacker and injured another.

Also in Mosul, an Iraqi was killed yesterday by a roadside bomb on a highway used frequently by American troops, police said. It was unclear whether the victim was planting the device when it exploded.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, insurgents opened fire with machine guns on the headquarters of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps. Security officers returned fire, killing one of the attackers.