- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- A suicide
bomber blew up a fuel truck near a Baghdad police station on Monday, killing
at least nine people, wounding 62 and destroying cars and buildings.
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- The Philippines said it had completed the withdrawal
of its humanitarian military contingent in Iraq a month ahead of schedule
in a bid to save the life of hostage Angelo de la Cruz, a father of eight
who guerrillas have threatened to execute.
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- The pull-out has been criticized by Washington and by
Iraq's interim government, which said Manila was bowing to terrorists.
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- The Baghdad attack was the latest of at least five suicide
bombings over the past week aimed at Iraqi police, National Guard or senior
members of Iraq's new government which have killed more than 35 Iraqis
in a seemingly accelerated campaign.
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- Iraq's Health Ministry said it had so far recorded nine
dead and 62 wounded but expected its death toll to rise. It said bodies
were still being brought to hospitals and boxes of remains had yet to be
sifted through.
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- At the scene of the blast, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel
Bill Salter said between 10 and 15 people had been killed in an attack
he said was probably carried out by a suicide bomber.
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- "We believe it was possibly a fuel-truck type vehicle,"
Salter told reporters. Witnesses said they saw a fuel tanker racing toward
the police station moments before the explosion.
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- Reuters Television pictures showed flames still licking
the wreckage of burned-out cars an hour after the blast, and smoke rising
from smoldering buildings. Bystanders gathered up the body parts of the
dead, filling several boxes with remains.
-
- In the latest assassination of senior bureaucrats, Defense
Ministry official Issam Jassem Qassim was shot dead outside his home by
three gunmen late on Sunday, a ministry spokesman said, a day after a failed
attempt on the life of Iraq's justice minister which killed five bodyguards.
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- In southern Iraq a British helicopter crashed, killing
one of the crew and wounding two, Britain's Defense Ministry said.
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- WAVE OF VIOLENCE
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- The suicide bomb was detonated shortly after 8 a.m.,
as people were arriving at work. Car workshops across the road from the
police station bore the brunt of the blast, witnesses said, and several
people working there were killed.
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- "Those who were standing in the open were killed.
Those who saw it were killed," said car workshop worker Laith Abdel
Karim.
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- It was the latest in a series of suicide attacks in recent
days. A car bomb outside the headquarters of the U.S. military and the
Iraqi interim government in Baghdad last week killed 11 people and another
outside an Iraqi National Guard garrison 125 miles northwest of Baghdad
killed 10.
-
- A suicide bomber tried to assassinate Iraq's justice
minister on Saturday and the governor of the northern Nineveh province
was assassinated in an attack on his convoy last week.
-
- Insurgents often target the police and the National Guard,
accusing them of collaborating with the U.S. military. One National Guardsman
at the scene of Monday's bombing was angered by that charge.
-
- "They say we collaborate with the coalition. We
don't collaborate, we just protect our nation. We protect the land of Iraqis,"
Amer Shaker Mehdi said.
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- PHILIPPINE PULLOUT
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- A official at the Philippine embassy in Kuwait said 34
soldiers left their base in Iraq on Monday. Eleven were withdrawn last
week. A few Filipino soldiers are expected to remain in Baghdad to protect
the Philippine embassy.
-
- Insurgents are also holding an Egyptian truck driver
and perhaps a Bulgarian. One kidnapped Bulgarian has already been killed
and hopes are fading for the other. An Egyptian embassy official said he
hoped the Egyptian would be released Monday.
-
- But as hopes grew for the release of the Filipino and
the Egyptian, it emerged that a Turkish driver had been killed and another
was missing and feared kidnapped following an attack on their fuel-truck
convoy near Mosul on Saturday.
-
- Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group Tawhid
and Jihad, believed to be behind the kidnapping of the Bulgarians, has
already killed an American and a South Korean hostage.
-
- Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest
car bombings in Iraq and is the U.S. military's prime target in the country,
with a $25 million price on his head.
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- Early on Sunday, the U.S. military conducted air strikes
against a suspected Zarqawi safe house in the restive town of Falluja west
of Baghdad, killing 11. The strikes were authorized by Iraq's interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi.
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- Zarqawi, who Washington says is allied to al Qaeda, has
pledged to kill Allawi and on Sunday a group linked to him offered a reward
of $282,000 for the prime minister's death, according to a notice on an
Islamist Web site. Allawi was on a visit to Jordan on Monday.
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- - Additional reporting by Dean Yates and Mariam Karouny
in Baghdad, Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul and Haitham Haddadin in Kuwait
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