Suicide Blast in Iraq Kills Three, Injures 19

Eight U.S. Soliders Also Wounded In Attack

BAGHDAD, April 20 -- A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform killed three Iraqis, including two employees of the U.S. Embassy's office in Diyala province, on Monday, authorities said. The blast wounded 19 people, among them eight American soldiers, two other embassy employees and three Iraqi policemen.

The bomber detonated explosives at approximately 10 a.m. while standing near a group of soldiers and civilians who were en route to the weekly provincial council meeting in Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad. The wounded embassy employees are an American contractor and a British citizen employed as an interpreter and cultural adviser, a U.S. Embassy official said. The two slain employees were Iraqi contractors, the official said.

Diyala is one of two provinces where U.S. soldiers might remain in urban areas after this summer, when they are supposed to pull out of cities in accordance with a bilateral agreement. Iraqi officials are expected to tell the U.S. military in the coming weeks whether they would like to keep American soldiers in urban areas in Diyala and neighboring Nineveh province, which includes the restive city of Mosul, beyond the deadline.

The attack was the latest in a recent wave of suicide bombings that suggest Iraq's crippled insurgency may be returning.

U.S. diplomats and civilian contractors assigned to provincial reconstruction teams depend on the U.S. military for security and transportation in most provinces. They regularly attend council meetings and meet with local elected officials and other community leaders to offer technical and financial support.

Diyala council chairman Raad al-Dahlagi said a group from the provincial reconstruction team attends most council meetings, which are held Mondays at 10 a.m. "Those Americans were on their way to meet with me," Dahlagi said. "They visit us every week."

Maj. Derrick Cheng, a U.S. military spokesman, said the assailant was probably not a police officer and that the uniform was "used as a disguise." Iraqi extremists have in the past used Iraqi military and police uniforms -- which are easy to procure -- to bypass checkpoints and approach military targets unnoticed.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, on Sunday asserted responsibility for two suicide bombings last week, according to the Site Intelligence Group, a Bethesda-based organization that analyzes propaganda posted by extremists on the Internet. Those attacks targeted oil-field guards in the northern city of Kirkuk and Iraqi soldiers at a base in Anbar province, in western Iraq.

After a relative lull, al-Qaeda in Iraq last month vowed to carry out a new wave of attacks code-named "The Good Harvest."

Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups experienced significant setbacks during the past two years, following numerous crackdowns, tighter border controls and the desertion of thousands of insurgents who were paid by the United States.

The groups of former insurgents, called Awakening councils or Sons of Iraq, were recently weaned from the U.S. payroll and transferred to the Shiite-led Iraqi government. Many Sons of Iraq members are suspicious of the government and accuse it of undermining the groups.

"After being severely weakened by the Awakening Councils and the U.S. troop surge and laying low for some time, the ISI, likely emboldened by the pledge of the United States to withdraw from Iraq, has recently raised its profile with new claims for attacks, propaganda and speeches by the group's leaders," Rita Katz, director of Site, said in an e-mail.

A Washington Post special correspondent in Baqubah and Dalya Hassan and Zaid Sabah in Baghdad contributed to this report.