Car bomb explodes outside police station

A car bomb exploded today outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.

The blast followed a night of clashes between US troops and insurgents that left 10 dead and 27 wounded in the troubled city of Fallujah, west of the capital.

Northwest of Baghdad, insurgents detonated a bomb late on Saturday that wounded four U.S. troops, who shot dead one attacker, the military said.

In central Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb today that killed two civilians and wounded two others, said Fawad Allah, an officer at Karradah police station.

The blast in Mosul occurred when a white four-wheel drive vehicle sped into a restricted entrance outside the Summar police station, prompting guards to open fire, said Abdella Zuheir, a policeman at the scene. The vehicle then came to halt and exploded, he said.

The bomb killed at least five people, including three police, said AbdelAzil Hafoudi, an officer at al-Salam hospital. He said 53 people were also wounded, among them eight police.

A US military spokesman confirmed the attack and put the toll at three dead and 49 wounded. He said no coalition forces were involved.

Insurgents have been pressing a campaign to destabilise the interim government despite last months transfer of sovereignty from the U.S. occupation authority. About 160,000 coalition troops, mostly Americans, remain in Iraq.

In Fallujah, at least 10 people were killed and 27 wounded during fighting late Saturday and early today in the eastern part of the city, hospital officials said.

Huge explosions were heard in Fallujah overnight as U.S. forces tried to enter the town, residents said. Clashes occurred on one of Fallujah’s main streets and U.S. helicopters fired up to eight rockets into an industrial area, they said.

Dr Wissam Abdul Rahman of Fallujah Hospital said 10 people died and 15 were injured. An official at another hospital, Dr. Hammadi al-Duleimi, said his medical centre treated 12 wounded people.

Elsewhere, four US 1st Infantry Division soldiers were wounded when guerrillas attacked their patrol in Samarra, northwest of Baghdad, with an improvised explosive device just before midnight on Saturday, said military spokesman Maj. Neal O’Brien.

The patrol returned fire, killing one of the attackers in a palm grove, he said.

Two children suffering shrapnel wounds – it was unclear whether from the same bomb blast or another – were taken by U.S. troops to a nearby coalition hospital. They later died of their wounds, O’Brien said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi militants said they kidnapped two Turks and threatened to behead them within 48 hours, the latest in the country’s unrelenting wave of abductions.

The news came late on Saturday as efforts intensified to free seven truck drivers taken captive by other insurgents.

The Tawhid and Jihad group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi demanded the Turks’ employers leave Iraq in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera television, which showed three masked, black-garbed gunmen standing behind two seated men holding various forms of identification, including what apparently were Turkish passports.

Al-Jazeera identified the men as two Turkish truck drivers working for a Turkish company delivering goods to U.S. forces in Iraq. The network said the militants threatened to decapitate the men if their demands were not met.

Militants loyal to al-Zarqawi have claimed responsibility for a number of bloody attacks and beheadings of previous foreign hostages, including US businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun-il and Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov.