Iraq: no days without blood and deaths

A suicide car bomber slammed into a truck Thursday that was carrying policemen along the main road connecting Baghdad with its airport, killing at least eight officers and injuring at least 25, police and hospital officials said.

The suicide bomber plowed his black sedan at high speed into a truck carrying police officers from checkpoint to checkpoint along the road about 4 p.m.

The officers were part of an evening shift that was replacing other officers at the checkpoints, said police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim and medic Najam Abid of the al-Yarmouk hospital, tells CBC News.

The Marines have lost 11 men and two sailors over the past week in separate incidents around Anbar.

Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber rammed into an &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/war/2003/03/21/44783.html ' target=_blank>Iraqi army convoy in northern Iraq early Friday, injuring at least seven people - three soldiers, three civilians and one policeman, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said. The blast came on the heels of a suicide car bomb on Baghdad's airport road Thursday that killed at least eight police officers and wounded 25 more.

On June 11, the &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/usa/2002/11/23/39879.html ' target=_blank>Marines had engaged the insurgents after the militants took control of a road just outside Karabilah near the Iraqi-Syrian frontier city of Qaim, about 200 miles west of Baghdad.

The battle was also where insurgents had killed 21 people after beheading three of them. Those bodies, found on June 10, were believed to belong to a group of missing Iraqi soldiers.