BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi police colonel in Baghdad on Monday while at least 12 other people, many of them security force members, were killed in a string of attacks around the country.
Colonel Abdul Karim Fahid, chief of the Balaat al-Shuhada station in the capital`s southern Dura district, was shot dead along with his driver at about 8:00 am (0500 GMT), a defense ministry source said.
The group of Iraq`s Al-Qaeda frontman, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for killing the colonel in a message on an Islamist website.
It said the Balaat al-Shuhada police chief "fought God and his prophet (and) displayed his non-belief and his immorality as he attacked Moslems in Dura."
It was not possibile to establish the authenticity of the message.
In further violence targeting the security forces, a policeman and a road cleaner died when a roadside bomb planted in a garbage dump detonated in the path of a police patrol in Al-Amil neighborhood on the capital`s southwest side, police said.
A source at Yarmuk hospital said his facility received one dead policeman and seven wounded, including six policemen, from the attack.
The hospital also said it received the bodies of two Shiite pilgrims gunned down south of the capital in Mahawil as they walked to the shrine city of Karbala to commemorate the end of the 40-day mourning period for revered Imam Hussein slain 14 centuries ago.
Police in nearby Mussayab said two of their comrades were killed and 10 wounded, most of them policemen, when a booby-trapped bicycle left on the side of the road exploded.
Two mortar rounds fell at about 12:30 am (0930 GMT) on the capital`s fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, home to the government and the US embassy, without causing damage or casualties, said an interior ministry source.
North of the capital, an Iraqi soldier was killed as he tried to defuse a roadside bomb in Mushahda, said Captain Assad Sadat.
A woman was killed and her three-year-old son wounded when she was caught by a roadside bomb explosion intended for a US military convoy near the refinery town of Baiji, said police, adding that an Iraqi businessman working with US forces was gunned down in the same area.
In the southern port city of Basra, Iraqi soldiers backed by British troops arrested 19 suspects in a series of raids Sunday that lasted almost six hours, said Iraqi army spokesman Faris al-Tamimi.
He said one of the homes raided was that of Jasim Ahmed al-Aqrab, an official in the Islamic Iraqi party, one of the main Sunni Muslim political groupings in the country.
Four of Aqrab`s cousins were arrested and weapons at his home were seized, but he was not detained for lack of evidence of his involvement in insurgent attacks, added Tamimi.
Basra, Iraq`s predominantly Shiite second city, is relatively calm compared with the rest of the country, but sees the occasional attacks against police and army forces.
03/28/2005 11:35 GMT