BAGHDAD - Two Iraqi farmers were killed in a car bomb south of Baghdad on Monday while a driver in a Turkish convoy of trucks was killed in a roadside bomb attack near Baiji in the north, security sources said.
The farmers were in a pickup truck carrying lettuce when a car bomb exploded in their path, killing them and wounding two other passersby, according to a policeman at the scene who did not wish to be identified.
He said a US military convoy had passed through the area shortly before the attack, which happened in the Rashid area on the capital's southern approaches.
In the north, a truck driver in a Turkish convoy escorted by US troops was killed when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb near the village of Al-Hajaj around the refinery town of Baiji, 220 kilometres (140 miles) from Baghdad, said Major Ali al-Qaisi of the Iraqi police.
He said the convoy was travelling south from the Turkish border and that the driver died shortly after being rescued from the burning truck by US soldiers.
A similar attack two days ago in the same area killed a foreign truck driver presumed Turkish.
Neither the US military nor the Turkish embassy were immediately available for comment.
Except for the die-hard few, most Turkish drivers have stopped venturing unescorted on the treacherous roads linking Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul after a string of kidnappings and gruesome murders in the area over the past year.
Most transport supplies and goods for the US military.
Meanwhile in Mahmudiyah, a medic in a local hospital said his facility had received three bodies and a wounded man who later died.
The hospital official, who did not want to be named, said the men were attacked by gunmen while travelling on a road west of Mahmudiyah.
The roads crisscrossing the area are among the most dangerous in Iraq and corpses of civilians and members of the fledgling security forces are often dumped in the open.
In Mosul, an Iraqi cameraman working for a Kurdish-language television station was gunned down, hospital sources said.
Husam Hilal Sarsam, a Christian who worked for the satellite station of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Masoud Barzani, was kidnapped two weeks ago, a member of his family told AFP on condition of anonymity.
And in the capital, a bomb attack on the car of the director general of the Iraqi health ministry wounded four of his bodyguards, a medical source said.
The attack occurred in Baghdad's western Al-Ghazaliyah district as Saad al-Amili's car drove by, the source said.
Insurgents regularly attack Iraqi officials. Two weeks ago, rebels gunned down a judge and his son working on the special tribunal to try members of the old regime.
03/14/2005 12:05 GMT