At least 17 people were killed and 32 injured in two separate attacks in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said, dpa reported. Ten victims died in a suicide bombing in Shirqat, in northern Salah el-Din province. The attack also injured 14, the sources said. Four policemen were among the dead and four more among the injured. A police station, several houses and vehicles were severely damaged as well as 10 shops when the bomber blew up his car near a market in the town, located 170 kilometres north of Baghdad. In Nineveh province, four people were killed and 17 wounded in a car bomb attack in Sinjar town, 100 kilometres west of the restive northern city of Mosul. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed Saturday and a civilian was injured in a bomb blast that targeted a police patrol in eastern Mosul, a local police source said. A high-ranking officer of the Iraqi police escaped an assassination attack in Kirkuk on Saturday, a source from the Kirkuk Emergency Police Department said. The source told Voices of Iraq news agency that a sticky bomb was attached to the vehicle of a major-general of the Baghdad police in southwestern Kirkuk, adding that no one was hurt. Oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Turkmen, Kurdish and Arab population, lies 250 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. -- SPA
