US President George W Bush apologized Tuesday to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for the desecration of the Islamic holy book the Koran by a US soldier stationed in Iraq, media reports said, according to dpa. The Al-Iraqiya news channel reported that al-Maliki received an apology from the US President on the incident, which involved the soldier firing his weapon at the holy book for target practice. Meanwhile, an explosion targeted a convoy of the speaker of Iraq's Council of Representatives, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, wounding three of his companions, Iraqi television reported. The blast occurred in an area west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi police officer was killed in the late hours of Monday in the Ashar area, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces detained 15 suspected terrorists and confiscated a large weapons cache in the same city. Militants opened fire on four members of the Awakening Council in Diloeiya city, some 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, security sources told dpa. The Awakening Councils are local police squads located mainly in Sunni provinces and are set up to combat the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Separately, an Iraqi military spokesman told dpa that eight Iraqi soldiers were wounded while 31 suspected terrorists were detained in a security operation in Baghdad.
