Baghdad, Iraq – A suicide bomber rammed his car into a police checkpoint across the street from the Iranian Embassy on Monday morning, killing six people and injuring another six, Iraqi police and army officials said.
Also Monday, U.S. military officials said that two airmen were killed and another injured Sunday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device on a roadway near Taji, about a dozen miles north of Baghdad. The airmen, who were not immediately identified, were assigned to the 586th Expeditionary Mission Support Group.
In the bombing in Baghdad, it was unclear what the bomber intended to attack – the checkpoint itself, the embassy, or the heavily guarded entrance to the Green Zone and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense about 500 yards away from the site of the explosion. Several car-bomb attacks have occurred in this area of Baghdad, the last one about two months ago.
This explosion was so powerful that it flung the suicide bomber’s car and a nearby police pickup truck to the other side of the road.
Baghdad’s top police officer, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Razaq Samarie, told The Associated Press that two civilians and a policeman were killed and six Iraqis wounded, including five policemen.
But witnesses at the scene said six people died. Mohammad Hassouny, a guard at the Iranian Embassy, said that three police officers inside the truck were instantly incinerated in the blast. Two civilians who were inside a taxi near the checkpoint were also killed, said Lt. Mazen Ismael of the Iraqi army.
The sixth man reportedly killed in the explosion was drinking tea and talking about going to his home in Babil province, to the south of Baghdad, when shrapnel from the explosion, 200 yards away, hit him in the neck. He fell to the ground and died, Um Ali, the woman who owned the tea stall, said.
