Gunmen ambush police checkpoint near Mosul

Gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police checkpoint in northern Iraq before dawn today, killing six officers in a sophisticated attack on fledgling Iraqi security installations, police said.

Militants packed into four cars screeched up to the checkpoint south of Mosul at around 1:30am, attacking it from both sides, said police Brig Abdel-Karim al-Jubouri.

Clashes lasted about 15 minutes, after which all the gunmen escaped, al-Jubouri said.

Six policemen were killed and the other four at the checkpoint were wounded - all men from the local area, he said.

Al-Jubouri said it is believed that the assailants – suspected members of the al Qaida front group the Islamic State of Iraq – sustained some casualties but nobody was left behind.

The attack occurred in the Gayara area south of Mosul, a mostly Sunni Muslim city that includes many ethnic Kurds, located about 225 miles north-west of Baghdad.

The area has seen an increase in violence since US and Iraqi troops launched offensives earlier this year to oust Sunni militants from the Iraqi capital and its surrounding belts. Some al Qaida-linked insurgents are believed to have fled north, digging into positions in the Sunni-dominated Mosul area.

At least two prison breaks earlier this year also emptied hundreds of suspected insurgents into the streets there.

The Sunni insurgency has also been strong in the volatile Diyala province east of Baghdad, where four civilians were killed and four others injured today.

In Diyala’s al Salam area, gunmen opened fire on a car at 9am killing two and wounding two others, while an hour later in another area, assailants shot into a crowd in central Muqdadiyah killing two and wounding two, police said.

Other scattered violence left at least five other Iraqis dead, police said, including a civilian killed by a roadside bomb on Palestine Street, a popular shopping district in the Iraqi capital. The bomb targeted a passing convoy of SUVs, and left five other people wounded, police said.

The attacks came less than a day after insurgents fired rockets or mortars at the sprawling garrison that houses the headquarters of American forces in Iraq, killing one person and wounding 11 coalition soldiers, the US command said.

The command said yesterday the person killed was a “third country national,” meaning someone who is not an American or Iraqi.

Most troops stationed at Camp Victory are American, but other coalition soldiers are based at the complex near Baghdad International Airport and workers from other countries are also there.

No further details on the attack were immediately released.

The violence occurred after two days of congressional testimony by US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the top commander Gen. David Petraeus, on the situation in Iraq since US President George Bush’s decision to send 30,000 reinforcements to stem sectarian violence.

Petraeus recommended keeping the bulk of US forces in Iraq after next summer. The Associated Press has learned that Bush will tell the American people this week he plans to reduce the US troop presence by next summer to pre-buildup levels.

The Iraqi government welcomed Petraeus’ recommendation to keep additional forces in Iraq into this coming year, giving assurances that the need for US military support here would decrease over time.

National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, reading from a government statement, said the Iraqis believed that “in the near future” the need for US and other coalition forces “will decrease.”

“The aim of the Iraqi government is to achieve self-reliance in security as soon as possible, but we still need the support of coalition forces to reach this point,” cautioned al-Rubaie, who in the past has often given rosy pictures of Iraq’s capabilities.

Still, he suggested that Iraqi forces may be strong enough by the end of next year to support even more reductions in US troops than Petraeus outlined to Congress.

“We are not far from truth, maybe, if we say that multinational forces numbers could reach by the end of next year less than 100,000,” al-Rubaie told reporters today.