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]
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