BAGHDAD, Nov. 29 -- A car packed with explosives barreled into a police station in a town in western Iraq on Monday, killing at least seven policemen, the latest in a withering insurgent assault on Iraqi police, army and National Guard forces that the U.S. military hopes can inherit responsibility for security in the country.
The car bombing was the bloodiest of several recent attacks across the country. Also on Monday, a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded three, and a mortar attack south of the capital wounded 13 Marines. Insurgents on Sunday night stormed a police station in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad.
U.S. Marines evacuate a colleague, one of 13 Marines who were wounded in an insurgent mortar attack south of Baghdad.
(Thaier Al-sudani -- Reuters)
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In western Iraq, residents said U.S. military aircraft bombed a house in Garma, near the city of Fallujah, killing nine people, including two women and a child. The strike came after guerrillas launched four rockets at a nearby U.S. military post, the residents said. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Monday night that he had no report of the strike.
The car bomb tore through the police station at 9 a.m. in Baghdadi, about 140 miles west of the capital along the Euphrates River, police Lt. Raad Jawad Hiti said. The explosives were hidden in a blue sedan, which hurtled past concrete barriers and into the police station before officers could stop it, he said.
Residents said the bombing followed U.S. raids in the area that led to the detention of 21 people. A statement circulated in the city from a group calling itself Ansar al-Gharbiya Brigades asserted responsibility for the attack and warned police not to take part in U.S. raids.
In attacks that have ranged from execution-style slayings to armed raids on police stations, insurgents have made Iraq's fledgling security forces leading targets. Scores have died in the bloodshed, sapping morale in some cities in the restive regions north and west of Baghdad. In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, almost the entire 5,000-man police force deserted when insurgents staged an uprising this month.
In the attack in Samarra on Sunday night, gunmen stormed the police station, looted the armory, seized police cars and then fled after facing no resistance, the Associated Press reported. U.S. troops went to the police station Monday morning and arrested two dozen people, the news agency said, quoting police there.
The Iraqi police and security forces are a crucial part of the American strategy to restore calm to the restive regions dominated by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority before an election planned for Jan. 30 to choose a 275-member parliament. The creation of capable Iraqi security forces is seen as a crucial step before beginning a withdrawal of the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, which have begun an aggressive campaign against the insurgency.
So far this month, the U.S. military has sent thousands of troops into Mosul, 220 miles north of Baghdad, and Fallujah, where fierce fighting destroyed much of a city that had been in the hands of insurgents since April.
The latest offensive, begun last week, is in a region south of Baghdad where insurgents have driven police from their posts, set up roadblocks and imposed a strict brand of Islamic law.
U.S. forces, working with Iraqi and British troops, discovered weapons caches near the cities of Yusufiyah and Latifiyah. The military said three insurgents were killed in raids in the region. Marines also shot and killed a driver who approached a military post in Yusufiyah after the driver failed to stop when ordered, the military said.
The military statements could not be independently verified. The region remains one of the most dangerous in Iraq, and for weeks, reporters working independent of the military have not been able to travel through the towns.
The military reported that 13 Marines were wounded in an attack in the region. As a policy, the Marines do not disclose precisely where or how their troops are wounded or killed.
U.S. forces have targeted the area south of Baghdad in part because the road network in the area offers access to insurgents carrying out attacks on the capital, which remains tense even though street clashes that erupted earlier this month have subsided.
The British Embassy on Monday banned its staff from traveling on the highway between Baghdad and the airport, a frequent target of the guerrillas.
"We advise against all but essential travel to Iraq," the embassy said in a statement. "We urge all British nationals to consider whether their presence in Iraq is essential at this time. Even essential travel to Iraq should be delayed, if possible."
Staff writer Jackie Spinner south of Baghdad contributed to this report.
