Four women among nine Iraq dead

Nine people were killed in an outburst of violence in Iraq, including four Christian women driving to jobs at a US military base and two American soldiers killed in a mortar barrage.

South of Baghdad, the security chief of Spanish troops in Iraq was shot in the head during a raid.

Two Iraqi policemen were killed today and three others were wounded when gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint between Fallujah and Ramadi, two insurgency hotspots west of Baghdad.

The attack occurred along the same road where the day before, assailants firing from a speeding car killed four women cleaners and wounded six other people in a convoy headed for the US military base at Habbaniyah, 50 miles west of the capital.

It appeared the women were targeted as part of an insurgent campaign to discourage Iraqis from co-operating with the occupation forces.

Elsewhere, two US soldiers were killed and another wounded during a rocket and mortar barrage late Wednesday on an American camp near Baqouba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad. US troops returned fire, damaging a house, witnesses said.

The latest deaths brought to 505 the number of American service members who have died since a coalition launched the Iraq war on March 20. Most of the deaths have occurred since US President George Bush declared an end to active combat on May 1.

In Madrid, the Spanish Defence Ministry said the security chief for Spanish troops in Iraq was shot and seriously wounded during a raid against suspected insurgents south of Diwaniyah, headquarters of the 1,300-member Spanish military force .

Civil Guard commander Gonzalo Perez Garcia was rushed to a US military hospital in Baghdad, where he was reported in critical condition.

Ten Spaniards have died in Iraq since August. An ambush in late November killed seven Spanish intelligence agents.

Elsewhere, the 23-year-old son of a former senior official from Saddam Hussein’s Baath party was killed by an unidentified attacker in the British controlled southern city of Basra, stronghold of Iraqi Shiite Muslims who were oppressed Saddam’s Sunni Muslim regime.

“The message is clear. The anti-US elements want to turn the clock back on Iraq,” coalition spokesman Dan Senor said. “They want to turn back to the era of mass graves and chemical attacks and torture chambers and rape rooms, and they will target Iraqis and Iraqi leaders who want to change that course and move Iraq forward.”