12 wounded in suicide bomb attack on Iraqi police station

Two suicide bombers struck a police station south of Baghdad today, blowing themselves up in an attack that wounded 11 policemen and a female bystander.

North of the capital, gunmen killed two Iraqi contractors, police said.

In the suicide bombing, two men drove up to the police station in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, in a pick-up truck. They opened machine-gun fire on the police, who fought back, hitting one of the assailants before the car blew up, police Lt. Col. Khalil Abdul-Ridha said.

A series of mortar rounds then hit the police station, but nobody was harmed, Abdul-Ridha said.

In Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a car carrying Iraqi contractors, killing two and wounding one, said police Capt. Hakim al-Azzawi. The men provided services to US troops, al-Azzawi said.

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, wounding four policemen and two children walking to school, police said. Kirkuk is 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, authorities called a curfew in the city of Beiji, imposing a vehicle ban as the military conducted raids searching for insurgents, city officials said.