IRAQ: At least eight car bombs exploded across Iraq yesterday killing 29 people as insurgents defied a widespread US-Iraqi security clampdown.
In the Kurdish city of Arbil, a suicide bomber drove his car into police recruits, killing at least 12 and wounding about 100 on a soccer field, officials said.
A second car-bomb attack in the Kurdish region killed the security chief of the town of Halabja along with three bodyguards, while another on an Iraqi army checkpoint in the disputed oil city of Kirkuk killed four soldiers.
Five car bombs blew up in Baghdad, targeting mostly Iraqi police and soldiers. One struck the notorious airport road.
The Arbil bombing was the second time in six weeks that an explosion has shattered the relative peace of the north. In May a suicide bomber killed 46 police recruits. Yesterday, about 200 traffic police recruits had gathered for roll call when the suicide bomber detonated his vehicle among them.
In Kirkuk four soldiers were killed when a suicide car bomber rammed their checkpoint. Those attacks followed a major pre-dawn raid by insurgents on a police station in southwest Baghdad, where they detonated two car bombs and then ambushed Iraqi police and troops who came to help a US unit that also came under fire.
The US military said five police and soldiers were killed and 20 wounded. Iraqi police at the scene said 18 insurgents were killed and 14 captured. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack. - (Reuters)