A car bomb went off outside a police academy south of Baghdad during a graduation ceremony Wednesday, killing at least 20 people, police said. Hours earlier, another car bomb killed two Iraqis in Baghdad.
According to The AP, the blast took place near the gate of the police academy in Hillah, about 100 kilometers south of Baghdad. Capt. Hady Hatef said it killed at least 20 people and injured others.
The number of dead Iraqi policemen in the last four months of 2004 was 1,300 before the latest blast, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry figures published Wednesday.
Earlier Wednesday, an explosives-filled car following a convoy of U.S. and Iraqi troops detonated in Baghdad's western district of Amiriyah, killing two Iraqi civilians and injuring 10, police officials said.
In a third attack Wednesday, gunmen killed Iraqi police Col. Khalifa Hassan and his driver as they headed to work in the city of Baqoubah, some 50 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, Dr. Ahmed Fouad of the Baqoubah General Hospital said.
Also, four Iraqi civilians were killed and two others were injured when U.S. soldiers opened fire after their convoy was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades in central Ramadi, some 100 kilometers west of Baghdad, according to Dr. Riyad al-Hiti of the Ramadi hospital.
Elsewhere, an American soldier died and two were wounded after their patrol was attacked with small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire Tuesday afternoon in Tal Afar in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
Five other U.S. servicemen died in three separate attacks on Tuesday, The AP added.
