October 1, 2005

Eleven people, including a Sunni imam and two US soldiers, were killed in attacks in the capital and northern Iraq on Saturday, security sources and the US military said.

The soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks, one in central Baghdad and the other near Baiji, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of the capital, the US military said, without providing further details.

The latest deaths brings to 1,921 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003. Another five civilian Defence Department employees have also been killed, according to Pentagon figures.

The imam of Baghdad's Arafat mosque, Salah Hassan Ayash, was shot dead at the wheel of his car in southeastern Baghdad, while an Iraqi army officer was also shot dead in his car in the Shiite district of Sadr City.

Three Iraqi policemen were killed and four wounded when a bomb targeted their patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

"One vehicle was completely burnt with three policemen inside," said police Captain Mohammed Adil.

The second patrol car was badly damaged and its four occupants wounded, he added.

In Baquba, north of the capital, a soldier and bus driver were killed and three soldiers wounded when gunmen opened fire on their vehicle, a military source said.

A seven-year-old child was accidentally killed after police opened fire on the car he was travelling in suspecting it of being a car bomb, said the same source. Another passenger was wounded.

Two Iraqis, including a soldier, were killed in a bomb attack in Dujail, south of Baquba, against an army patrol, said a local military source.

And two suspected insurgents were blown to smithereens further north in Ishaqi, police said, apparently when the bomb they were planting detonated prematurely.