Baghdad attacks kill 26

2004-12-03 11:25

Baghdad - Twenty-six people were killed, including at least 12 policemen, in double attacks on Friday in Baghdad, ending a relative lull in Iraq's capital since last month's United States-led assault on Fallujah, medics and officials said.

At least 12 Iraqi policemen were killed in a commando-style attack on a police station in western Baghdad's Al-Amel area, while at least another 14 people died in a suicide car bombing in the northern district of Al-Adhamiya.

Twelve policemen, two of them officers, were killed and five others wounded, including a prisoner, a doctor at the capital's Yarmuk hospital said.

Interior ministry spokesperson Sabah Kadhem said the attack was "part of a strategy of increasing terrorist attacks in order to prevent general elections being held". The assailants managed to flee, he said.

Landmark elections due

Landmark elections are due to be held in Iraq on January 30.

The suicide bombing in the Sunni Muslim district of Al-Adhamiya, near a Shiite mosque, killed 14 people and wounded 19, an interior ministry source said, adding that the car bomb blast also caused extensive material damage.

Residents said the Hamid al-Alwan mosque caught fire, while witness Mahmud Fouad, who lost a brother in the attack, said there were two explosions.

It was not immediately clear if the casualties were police or civilians.

The attack on the police station took place at 05:00, two hours before the bombing, when armed men attacked the police station in a residential area "from all sides", said local inhabitant Ahmed Hashem.

"I saw armed men firing towards the police station while taking cover behind rubbish bins and the police ran away," he told AFP.

Another resident, Ali Hussein, said gunfire lasted about an hour and that he had seen gunmen firing on the police station from the rooftops of neighbouring buildings.

A heavy police presence had sealed off the area several hours after the attack, preventing journalists from entering the police station, whose walls were riddled with bullet holes.

Hundreds of spent bullet cartridges lay scattered on the ground and two police cars were left burnt-out.

Baghdad had been relatively calm since US troops backed by Iraqi forces launched an assault against the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, west of the capital, on November 8.

The last major attack in Baghdad dates back to September 30 when more than 40 people were killed, most of them children, in two simultaneous suicide bombings in Al-Amel.

- AFP