Six people died and 26 injured in attacks across Iraq, including a suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul. According to AFP, one of the victims was a police lieutenant and the other a civilian, when a car slammed into a building housing police in the busy Mosul intersection.
On the main road 40 kilometers south of the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, a roadside bomb went off as a car full of Kurdish peshmergas fighters passed, killing one and wounding two. When members of the civil defense showed up at the site, a second bomb detonated injuring three of them.
Another Kurd died near Kirkuk when gunmen opened fire on his car while he was driving on the main road leading to Baghdad. Police in a village 90 kilometers south of Kirkuk also reported finding the headless corpse of a man in a black tracksuit lying in the river Zab.
In Baghdad, a bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the busy downtown Tayaran square, killing one person and wounding seven.
In the Shiite holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, police reported the shooting death of a former Baathist.
Also Wednesday, American and Iraqi forces on Wednesday raided a hospital in Ramadi that they suspect is a base for "insurgents." The Saddam Hospital has been used as a launchpad for mortar attacks and sniper fire against coalition forces, as well as violence against Iraqi civilians, the US Army said.
Lt. Col. Stephen Neary said the hospital had been used as a "safe haven and a place to coordinate attacks." "This Iraqi army-led operation will deny the insurgents the use of the Saddam Hospital and will facilitate the return of the Iraqi police to their former post located in the hospital," he said.
