Fatal bomb rips apart restaurant

A car bomb exploded yesterday at a Baghdad restaurant popular with police, killing at least seven people and wounding at least 82, and militants assassinated a top national security official.

Five US troops were killed by roadside bombs and a vehicle accident.

US and Iraqi forces detained 300 suspected insurgents in the biggest sweep in the capital to date.

The car bomb in the busy Talibia neighbourhood was detonated outside the Habayibna restaurant at a time when police officers usually meet for lunch, said police Lt Zaid Tarek.

“All these people were killed for no reason. What wrong did they do by being policemen or soldiers?” shaken restaurant owner Mshari Hassan said shortly after the blast.

Earlier, two carloads of gunmen killed Major General Wael al-Rubaei, a top national security official, and his driver in Baghdad’s latest drive-by shooting.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, the group run by Jordanian terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the killing in a statement posted on the group’s website.

Al-Rubaei’s killing came a day after another senior government official, Trade Ministry auditing office chief Ali Moussa, was killed as part of a terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month.

The US military yesterday said three American soldiers were killed on Sunday and one was injured in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul.

Another two Task Force Liberty soldiers also were killed in separate incidents Sunday. The first was killed when his patrol was attacked with a car bomb just north of Tikrit.

The other was killed in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk.

At least 1,634 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.