U.S. charges 11 GIs with abuse of Iraq detainees

More violence
The fatalities brought to 92 the number of British servicemen who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003. Britain has about 8,500-troops in the country, mostly based in the largely Shiite south, where support for the Shiite-led government in Baghdad is stronger.

British losses have been far fewer than those suffered by the larger U.S. force, which is bearing the brunt of the fight against Sunni Arab insurgents in northern, western and central Iraq. At least 1,763 members of the U.S. military have died since the war started.

In other violence Saturday, a suicide attacker detonated an explosive belt inside a police station 10 miles south of the northern city of Mosul, killing six policemen and wounding 20 others, Brig. Gen. Saeed Ahmed said.

A suicide car bomber also struck an Iraqi police patrol in the Baghdad subdivision of Dora, killing three commandos and wounding five civilians, hospital and police officials said.

Elsewhere in the capital, a suicide car bomber struck near a U.S. military convoy in the southeast of the city, setting a Humvee ablaze, police Lt. Col. Hassan Salloub said. No U.S. casualties were reported.

Bloody Friday
The attacks came a day after a wave of suicide car bombs and explosions targeting U.S. and Iraqi security forces rocked the capital, killing at least 33 people and wounding at least 111, including seven American soldiers.

One of the bombings hit after sundown on a bridge over the Tigris River near the home of President Jalal Talabani. Four security guards were killed and nine people were wounded in that attack. Talabani was at home at the time, aides said, but the target may have been a U.S. convoy.

Al-Qaida’s wing in Iraq claimed responsibility in Internet statements for several of the attacks, but the authenticity could not be confirmed.

The would-be bomber arrested Saturday in Baghdad said he was Libyan, according to police Lt. Mohammed Jassim.

Jassim said police grew suspicious of the man, stopped him and discovered the explosives belt.

On Thursday, Iraqi and U.S. forces captured another suicide bomber before he could detonate his explosives belt as part of coordinated assaults just 150 feet from the Green Zone, the site of the U.S. Embassy and major Iraqi government offices.

A car bomb exploded successfully. But one pedestrian bomber was killed after an Iraqi policeman shot him, setting off his explosive vest. Five policemen and four civilians were wounded by the blasts and gunfire.

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