4 policemen die in Iraqi police station attack

updated 2:43 p.m. ET April 25, 2007

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber wearing a hidden belt of explosives attacked a police station in Iraq’s volatile province of Diyala on Wednesday, killing at least four policeman just days after a double suicide bombing in the same province left nine U.S. soldiers dead.

Wednesday’s explosion, which also injured at least 16 people, occurred at the front gate of the police station in a marketplace in Balad Ruz city, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. All fatalities were policemen and the wounded included 11 civilians and five policemen, authorities said.

Since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched the security crackdown in Baghdad in February, Sunni militants are believed to have moved out of the Iraqi capital to seek haven in nearby areas such as Diyala.

U.N. report: Baghdad violence remains high
Despite that, a U.N. report released Wednesday said that violence in Baghdad remains at high levels.

In its first human rights report since the security plan was launched on Feb. 14 — with increasing U.S. and Iraqi troops levels in the capital — the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said civilian casualties in the daily violence between January and March remained high, concentrated in and around Baghdad.

UNAMI also said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new Jan. 1 through March 31 report did not contain overall death figures from Iraq’s Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.

The U.N. agency said the reason appeared to be that after the publication of its last human rights report on Jan. 16, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office told UNAMI its mortality figures were exaggerated, “although they were in fact official figures compiled and provided by a government ministry.”

“UNAMI emphasizes again the utmost need for the Iraqi government to operate in a transparent manner, and does not accept the government’s suggestion that UNAMI used the (previous) mortality figures in an inappropriate fashion,” the report said.

The current report cites many examples of deadly attacks by insurgents and militias across Iraq during the first three months of the year, but it often relies on media accounts of such killings and does not provide overall numbers for the period.

Iraq responds in anger
The Iraqi government responded angrily, calling the new U.N. report “inaccurate” and “unbalanced” and warned that it put the U.N.’s credibility at stake.

In other violence Wednesday, a roadside bomb hit a U.S. military convoy in Baiyaa, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of southwest Baghdad, setting fire to one of its Humvees, police said.

AP Television News footage from the scene showed flames and smoke rising from a Humvee on a two-lane road, which was closed off by at least one other Humvee and a U.S. tank. It was not immediately known if the attack caused any casualties.

Roadside bombs, mortar rounds and drive-by shootings also killed 10 Iraqis and wounded 23 in the Baghdad area and the cities of Kirkuk, Mosul and Fallujah, police said. The bodies of four Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured also were found.

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