Iraq: eight killed by roadside bomb

Insurgents used bomb attacks and a drive-by shooting to kill at least eight Iraqis and wound 15 on Sunday, including a police officer and his four children who died when an explosion set fire to their vehicle in northern Iraq, officials said.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military confirmed that an angry mob of insurgents had attacked a convoy of American contractors last month when they got lost in a Sunni Arab town north of Baghdad, killing four and wounding two.

The attack occurred on Sept. 20 when the convoy, which included U.S. military guards riding in Humvees, made a wrong turn into the town of Duluiyah and insurgents opened fire with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, Maj. Richard Goldenberg, a spokesman for Task Force Liberty in north-central Iraq, told The Associated Press.

In Sunday's deadliest insurgent attack, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy at 9:15 a.m. in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding 13, said police Capt. Farhad Talabani. He said six civilian cars were damaged by the blast. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no immediate information about the attack or whether it had caused American casualties.

In Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a civilian car being driven by police Lt. Colonel Haitham Akram at 8 a.m., said police 1st Lt. Udai Ahmed. The blast set the car on fire, killing Akram and his four children riding with him, Ahmed said.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb in the Dora neighborhood wounded two Iraqis, and a drive-by shooting in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, killed police 1st Lt. Falih Hassan Khalil, authorities said.

A loud explosion also rang out in central Baghdad at 11:35 a.m., sending black smoke up into the air, but it was not immediately known what had happened in the blast, reported AP.