Twin suicide car bombs blew up outside a police station near Baghdad's Green Zone today, killing seven people and wounding 57 in the latest deadly strike against Iraq's shaky security forces.
Police sources said the simultaneous explosions, which shook the city centre shortly after 9.30 a.m. (local time), also destroyed 35 vehicles, including 17 police cars.
It was not clear how many of those killed were police. A thick column of black smoke rose from the site of the blasts, near a main entrance to the Green Zone, home to the interim Iraqi government and several foreign embassies.
The heavy thud of machinegun fire could be heard immediately after the explosions as Iraqi police returned fire.
One survivor described the moments before the explosion: "I was in the criminal investigation department and saw our guards open the gates for a police patrol. Then a white car followed them in and blew up outside our building," he told reporters from his hospital bed, his head swathed in bloody bandages.
One blast was so powerful it blew a car onto the roof of an annexe next to the police station. The area around the site of the attack, which includes an entrance to the protected Green Zone often used by foreigners and the media, was quickly sealed off by US and Iraqi forces.
Meanwhile another suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle beside a bus carrying Kurdish militiamen in the northern city of Mosul today, killing at least seven, police and Kurdish officials said.
They said the victims were Kurdish peshmerga militiamen linked to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq. The PUK backed the US- led war to topple Saddam Hussein and is part of the interim government.
Also today, one US soldier was killed and one wounded when a roadside bomb hit their convoy near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, the army said. Another soldier was killed and five were wounded by a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad. Roadside bombs are said to have killed about 30 per cent of the US troops to have died in Iraq.