BAGHDAD, Jan 10 (AFP) - Gunmen killed Baghdad's deputy police chief Monday in the second assassination of a senior Iraqi official in days, as two US soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their armoured personnel carrier.
In a second attack on Iraq's fledgling security forces claimed by an al-Qaeda linked group, a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a checkpoint south of the capital killing three policemen and wounding 17.
Nine bodies were also discovered in the same region south of Baghdad whose support for the Sunni Arab insurgency has earned it the nickname the Triangle of Death, while 12 Iraqi soldiers were killed, along with four civilians, in a wave of bombings north of the capital.
"Baghdad's deputy police chief Brigadier General Amer Ali Nayef and his son Lieutenant Khalid Nayef were on their way to work from their home in Dura when they were shot by unknown assailants," said interior ministry advisor Dr. Sabah Kahdim.
The car, riddled with bullets in the front and back windows and stained with blood on the windshield and dashboard, crashed into a yard, where it was surrounded by teenagers, gawking at the latest carnage, an AFP photographer witnessed.
A statement posted on an Islamist website said militants loyal to Iraq's most wanted man, Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al Zarqawi, carried out the attack, which followed the killing last week of Baghdad governor Ali al-Hadaeri, the most senior Iraqi official to die since July last year.
Four US soldiers were also wounded in the bomb blast that ripped through a Bradley fighting vehicle in southwestern Baghdad, the US army said.
Based on the latest Pentagon figures, the deaths raised to 1,347 the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, 1,060 of them in combat.
The suicide bomber struck a checkpoint outside a police station in the town of Al-Maden 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Baghdad.
The bomber's vehicle had been painted blue and white like a police car, the interior ministry official said.
A fourth policeman was posted as missing after the blast.
Another Al-Qaeda-linked militant group, the Ansar al-Sunna, claimed the attack in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
"A lion from the Army of Ansar al-Sunna rammed his car-bomb into a police checkpoint in Zafaraniya killing at least 12 policemen," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.
Police Colonel Falah Hassan meanwhile died of wounds sustained in an ambush on Saturday, the interior ministry official said.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a bomb exploded as a joint US-Iraqi convoy passed, killing three Iraqi soldiers and wounding four, the military said.
Rebel snipers opened fire on the convoy after the blast and US soldiers detained 20 suspects, the military added.
Farther south, another two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bomb blast just outside the city of Samarra, which was recaptured from insurgents in a US-led assault last October, the US military said. Two US soldiers were lightly injured in the attack, the military added.
Police said six Iraqi soldiers were killed and four wounded in two bombings inside the volatile city.
An Iraqi soldier was killed and four others wounded in Balad, police said.
Three civilians, including one woman, were killed and four others wounded by a bombing near Tuz, north of Baghdad, police said, and four policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb in Baiji.
Gunmen also ambushed a Kurdish politician in Diyala province, and a Turkmen businessman and a well-known human rights activist were kidnapped near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan activist Riyadh al-Qassem was ambushed as he drove through the town of Jalawla, northeast of the capital, police said.
He was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds but his mother was killed.
Turkmen businessman Nidham Addin al-Tonji, owner of Kirkuk's biggest hotel, the Palace, was abducted in the city centre after gunmen stopped his car, Police Colonel Adel Ibrahim said.
Rights activist Mohamed Amin Khudur was kidnapped in a separate ambush in the town of Riyadh, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Kirkuk.
"The abductions are part of the continued attempts of the terrorists to terrify people," Ibrahim said.
01/10/2005 19:33 GMT - AFP