A suicide attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body Saturday at a gas station near a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad, leading to a huge explosion in a fuel tanker and killing at least 55 people, police said. More than 80 people were injured.
Police Capt. Muthanna Khaled Ali said the attack took place in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad. According to The AP, police and witnesses said the fuel tanker was moving slowly toward the pumps when an attacker ran to it and detonated his explosives. The station is located in the center of town near a cluster of houses, many of which caught fire, the witnesses said.
Earlier, three British troops were killed on Saturday in Iraq. At least 50 people were also wounded in incidents on Saturday. The British soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb went off at 1:30 am in the southern town of Al-Amarah. Two soldiers were also wounded in the explosion in the town's Hayae al-Risala district, the defence ministry said in London.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a car in an attack targeting a passing US military convoy. One civilian was killed, the interior ministry said, according to AFP. Another suicide car bomber attacked police commandos in the southern district of Dura, killing one commando and three civilians, two of them children, and injuring 11 people, an interior ministry official said.
A third bomber blew himself up in a police station in Iraq’s main northern city of Mosul, killing four policemen and injuring 18 more, police General Wathiq Mohammed said.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, judge Nurredin Ahmed, a Kurd from the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, was shot dead at his home, police declared. Elsewhere, a former general in Saddam Hussein's army and his son were found shot dead in Baghdad after being detained by police commandos, an interior ministry official told AFP.
Just south of the capital, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Jabala area, when Iraqi police tried to arrest him. The explosion wounded two policemen and four civilians, police said.
In Hawijah, west of Kirkuk, a car bomb wounded one Iraqi soldier, police said.
Near Kirkuk, seven Iraqi soldiers were wounded in an apparently accidental blast, while searching for unexploded ordnance.
The US military meanwhile said it had charged 11 soldiers with "violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice" after complaints of assault against suspected insurgents in custody. The military did not specify the nature of the assault, but said charges had been levelled on Wednesday.
