26 killed as bus blown up in Iraq

Suicide car bombers hit a bus packed with Iraqi National Guards yesterday, killing 26 people in the deadliest attack of its kind in four months on Iraqis cooperating with US forces to secure a January 30 election.  Two insurgents in an explosives-laden vehicle veered into the path of the bus and blew it up outside a US military base near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.  Hours later, guerrillas killed three policemen on patrol close to neighbouring Samarra, and shot dead a member of the city's governing council as well as his driver and bodyguard.  The attacks in the Sunni heartland, where loyalty to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein runs deep, were the latest targeting Iraq's fledgling security forces and government officials in a bloody campaign to scare voters away from the polls.  A National Guard officer said the car bomb killed 25 soldiers on the way to their posts. Relatives wept over the men's bodies at a local mosque. "My son, my son," one man wailed as he clutched at a wooden coffin. [more]