BAGHDAD - A suicide truck bomber struck an Iraqi police agency in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, police said. A U.S. helicopter fired flares on a crowd on a square in eastern Baghdad, hours after clashes between American troops and Shiite militia that left at least five people dead, but the military said it was part of an automatic self-defense system.
Fighting broke out in the predominantly Shiite Fidhiliyah area on the Baghdad's outskirts late Friday after a U.S. military convoy came under attack outside the local offices of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric whose Mahdi Army militia has recently stepped up attacks on American troops.
The U.S. military said an American patrol called for air and ground support after it came under attack by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades fired from the al-Sadr office. Spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said no Americans were killed or wounded, but he did not have immediate information on Iraqi casualties. "We're still looking into the incident," he said.
Sheikh Mohammed al-Hilfi, an al-Sadr representative from the office, said the clashes broke out after a raid on the office, which doubles as a mosque. The military did not confirm the raid.
He said seven people were killed and 21 wounded, while local police officials put the casualty figure at five killed and 19 wounded. The officials said those killed were Iraqis and included bystanders caught in the crossfire, while 16 other men were detained.
Hundreds of men chanted as they carried the wooden coffins draped in Iraqi flags of four people reportedly killed in the violence.
Associated Press Television video footage shot early Sunday showed a low-flying Apache helicopter firing flares as several hundred people, including teenagers and children, gathered around a devastated Humvee below.
Al-Hilfi accused the Americans of using the helicopter flares to disperse the crowd so they could recover the charred Humvee.
But Garver said the flares were fired automatically as part of a self-defense system for the helicopters after several recent deadly attacks against the aircraft.
"Those are not launched by the crew," he said. "When the helicopter receives a signal that it is being targeted by a radar, it launches those flares in self-defense against a perceived threat."
He said the flares, which are designed to divert heat-seeking missiles and other anti-aircraft weapons, usually burn out before they hit the ground but these were still burning because the helicopter was flying at low altitude.
Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia fought U.S. forces for much of 2004. More recently, the U.S. military has repeatedly blamed the militia for the deaths of American soldiers killed by roadside bombs it says are provided by Iran.
A roadside bomb killed a U.S. airman and wounded another Sunday in southern Iraq, the military said. The death raised to at least 3,504 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The suicide explosion in Tikrit devastated a building housing the highway police directorate in the Albu Ajil village on the eastern outskirts of ousted leader Saddam Hussein's hometown, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. Tikrit is 80 miles north of Baghdad.
The attacker detonated his payload after smashing into a blast wall, flattening a small reception building and damaging the main two-story building 20 yards away, the officer said, adding that most of the 10 killed and 55 wounded were police.
"It was a huge blast, my house was damaged," said Khalaf Eidan, a 45-year-old shopkeeper who lives nearby. "I thank God that none of my children were hurt."
The blast was the deadliest of a series of attacks and other violence that killed at least 26 people, many targeting Iraqi police as militants continue to hammer the country's shaky security forces. The terror campaign against Iraqi troops and police appears designed to blunt U.S. progress in creating a stable local force so the Americans can go home.
A roadside bomb struck a police patrol near a gas station in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding 6 other people - five officers and one civilian, according to the provincial police center for Diyala.
Militants have fled the capital to avoid capture in the security operation there, forcing the U.S. military to divert about 3,000 more American forces to Diyala from Baghdad. The province also has seen a rise in violence as Sunni insurgents and tribal leaders turn against al-Qaida in Iraq, sparking a violent power struggle between the groups.
A suicide car bomber smashed into a police patrol about 12 miles south of the provincial capital of Baqouba, killing two policemen and wounding three, officers at the provincial police center said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.
A village police chief northeast of Baqouba was abducted by gunmen who ambushed his car, police said, two days after an attack on another local police chief's house that left his wife, two brothers and 11 guards dead.
Gunmen elsewhere in the volatile province killed two policemen and a civilian in separate attacks in a Shiite enclave, they said.
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