Twenty-four killed in Iraq suicide attacks

A suicide bomber drove his lorry into a police station north of Baghdad today in the deadliest of a series of blasts that killed at least 24 people.

Violence ripped through the Iraq capital and two northern areas as Gordon Brown announced plans to withdraw nearly half Britain’s troops from southern Iraq, starting next spring.

Iran, meanwhile, reopened five border crossing points with northern Iraq, closed last month by Tehran to protest at the US detention of an Iranian official.

The deadliest attack in Iraq today was a suicide lorry bombing against a one-storey police station in Dijlah, a village to the north of Samarra in the Sunni heartland, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

At least 13 people – three officers and 10 civilians – were killed and 22 wounded in the blast, which also tore through a nearby empty school and several shops, police said.

The station, which was built in the 1980s on a thoroughfare that links Samarra with Tikrit, was poorly protected – surrounded by concrete barriers less than one metre high. It was ambushed less than a month ago by dozens of gunmen.

A suicide car bomber also struck a police checkpoint in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad, killing three officers and one civilian, and wounding 10 other people.

In Baghdad, a parked car bomb exploded at a market near Baghdad University’s technology department, killing five civilians and wounding 15.

Police elsewhere in the capital said a car bombing occurred near the Polish Embassy in the central Karradah district, killing two Iraqis and wounding five.

The attack was launched five days after Polish Ambassador General Edward Pietrzyk was wounded in an ambush. Three people died in the attack – a Polish security guard and two Iraqis.

The Polish Charge d’Affaires Waldemar Figaj said that he heard a series of explosions around the embassy this morning but the closest appeared to be about 200 metres away and the embassy had no reason to believe it “was targeted in any way.”

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks but they bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has promised an offensive to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.