IRAQ:Bombers struck in Baghdad and at a police HQ in a northern Iraqi border town yesterday, killing 19 people, and gunmen shot a reporter in the latest attack targeting Iraqi journalists.
In the worst violence, a suicide bomber driving a truck packed with explosives rammed a police headquarters and adjoining municipal building in the northern town of Rabea, near the Syrian border, killing nine people, police said. The attack also wounded 22 people.
The town is northwest of Mosul, where US military commanders blame Sunni insurgents and criminals for stoking the violence. Iraqi security officials, however, say Shia and Kurdish militias are also involved.
In Mosul, gunmen shot dead Sahar al-Haideri, a journalist working for the independent Aswat al-Iraqi news agency. She was the second staff member to be killed in just over a week.
The agency said the married mother of three had been on a "death list" issued by an al-Qaeda-led group.
Iraqi government officials say they suspect Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia was behind last week's kidnapping of a British computer consultant and his four bodyguards, who were abducted in Baghdad by gunmen in police uniforms.
Britain's ambassador to Iraq said yesterday he was willing to listen to the kidnappers but not to negotiate with them.
"We have people here in Iraq who are ready to listen . . . [ to] any person who may be holding these men and who may wish to communicate," envoy Dominic Asquith said.