Kirkuk car bomb kills eight

A suicide car bomber exploded at a checkpoint after guards opened fire as he approached a police station in Kirkuk today, killing eight people and wounding dozens, police said.

The blast, which occurred in the centre of the oil-rich city, 180 miles north of Baghdad, was the latest in an increase in violence in northern Iraq even as the government and US forces prepare to launch a massive security operation aimed at stopping sectarian attacks in Baghdad.

Guards shot the driver as he approached the checkpoint, killing him before he could reach the police station but his explosives detonated, causing part of the sand-coloured station to collapse and damaging nearby shops, police Brigadier Sarhad Qadi said as he raised the casualty toll to eight killed and 43 wounded.

He said most of the casualties were caused by the building collapse.

In southern Iraq, meanwhile, a roadside bomb struck British forces, lightly wounding two, in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles south-east of Baghdad, according to the ministry of defence.

Gunmen also attacked a British convoy as it approached a bridge in Basra last night, leaving one soldier wounded, British spokeswoman Katie Brown said.

Violence also persisted in the Baghdad area.

A mortar attack struck a residential area in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, killing a woman and wounding 10 other people, police said.

Police said they found the body of an Iraqi policeman whose hands and legs had been bound hanging by electric wire two days after he was kidnapped while going to his home in the same area south of the capital.

Gunmen in a car opened fire on two brothers, aged 30 and 35, on their way to work as construction workers in Mahaweel, 35 miles south of Baghdad, killing one and wounding the other, police said.

In the capital, a civilian was killed in a drive-by shooting in the west, while a roadside bomb struck in a downtown commercial district, wounding a policeman and a bystander, according to police.

Five unidentified bodies were found by Iraqi police, including two apparently killed by a sniper on Haifa Street, a Sunni Arab stronghold in Baghdad that has seen recent fierce clashes. The others were found shot to death with their hands and legs bound in areas in western Baghdad, police said.

The violence resumed a day after 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence against Shiite targets.

Police raised the casualty toll in yesterday’s bombing of the al-Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad to 70 killed and 133 wounded.

The sharp increase in deadly attacks coincided with the release of UN figures that showed an average of 94 civilians died each day in sectarian bloodshed in 2006.