A string of explosions Saturday, including a roadside bomb that went off near an Iraqi army convoy on the outskirts of Baghdad, killed nine soldiers and wounded 20, police said. When the surviving soldiers responded by opening fire, they shot and killed the driver of a civilian car, said police Lt. Ahmed Abud, according to The AP.
Another bomb detonated on a busy road that connects with the perilous highway to the airport, police Capt. Thamir Talib said. One Iraqi was killed and seven wounded, hospital officials said.
In eastern Baghdad, two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their car, said police Capt. Mahir Abdelsatar.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb on a highway in Samarra, said police Lt. Qassim Mohamed. A suicide car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Abu al-Khasib, a town near Basra in southern Iraq, wounding two people, said police Col. Karim al-Zeidi.
And in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy, wounding three soldiers, said Dr. Bahaaldin al-Bakri at the city's hospital.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, accused by some for leadership failures in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, has been cleared by the US Army of all allegations of wrongdoing and will not be punished, officials said.
Three officers who were among Sanchez's top deputies during the period of the prisoner abuse in the fall of 2003 also have been cleared, The AP reported.
