Iraq: 26 dead in suicide car bomb blast

A suicide car bomb hit a bus packed with Iraqi National Guards on Sunday, killing 26 people in the deadliest attack of its kind in four months on Iraqis cooperating with US forces to secure a Jan 30 election.

Two bombers in an explosives-laden vehicle veered into the path of the bus and blew it up outside a US military base near the town of Balad, north of&to=http:// english.pravda.ru/war/2003/04/08/45800.html ' target=_blank>Baghdad. Hours later, insurgents killed three policemen on patrol close to neighbouring Samarra, and shot dead a member of the city’s governing council as well as his driver and bodyguard, wrote the Daily Times.

According to the Guardian, in other attacks, four Iraqi policemen were killed and one wounded when their vehicle was ambushed near Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. In Diyala province in the east the deputy governor, Ali Haddawi, was shot dead.

Hundreds of police and national guardsmen have been killed in the campaign of violence in the Sunni Arab dominated areas of central and northern Iraq.