Iraq attacks kill 7 soldiers, 5 police

Insurgents launched a series of apparently co-ordinated attacks in this city north the Iraqi capital today, killing seven soldiers and five police, police and medical officials said.

Police Brig. Mudhafar al-Jubbori said the assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and attacks on two checkpoints in the city, located about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The attacks killed seven soldiers and five police, and wounded 26 others including one civilian caught in the crossfire, said Tariq Ibrahim, a medic at Baqouba’s main hospital.

A spokesman for the US 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg, said guerrillas fired a mortar around into Baqouba near a blue domed mosque in the city.

There were no casualties in that attack, but Goldenberg said Iraqi police came under small arms fire shortly afterward on a highway south of the city.

“Coalition forces are responding to the mortar attack,” he said.