BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber driving a dynamite-laden truck destroyed a key bridge Saturday on a highway used by the departing US military, while separate attacks killed nine Iraqis, most of them security force members, police said.
There were no casualties in the blast that destroyed the bridge outside the city of Ramadi, which is about 125 km west of Baghdad, said a local police officer. The highway is used heavily by the US military to transport equipment out of the country. It is also a major roadway for civilian traffic.
The highway links Iraq to neighboring Syria and Jordan, where many Iraqis fled to escape sectarian violence.
Also Saturday, an attack on an Iraqi army convoy just outside of the city of Fallujah killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded 14, said a police officer in the city, which is about 65 km west of Baghdad.
A US military spokesman in Iraq’s western Anbar province, where both Ramadi and Fallujah are located, confirmed Saturday’s explosion on the highway bridge, which was close to two Iraqi military bases that host US troops in the area.
Lt. Col. Curtis L. Hill said US forces have “previously used the bridge,” but he would not say what impact its destruction might have on US military convoys transporting equipment out of Iraq to meet President Barack Obama’s deadline for a complete pullout of combat troops by August 2010.
The Anbar provincial police commander, Maj. Gen. Tariq Yousif Mohammed, told the Associated Press that he believed the blast was aimed at Iraqis. Traffic in and around Ramadi was backed up after the early morning explosion. “I don’t think the Americans were targeted by the blast,” he said.
Elsewhere in Iraq, violence has intensified. The northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk have recently been hit by horrific attacks targeting ethnic minorities and Iraqi security forces.
On Saturday, attackers threw hand grenades at an Iraqi army patrol near Kirkuk, 290 km north of Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding two others, a police official said. In Mosul, 360 km northwest of Baghdad, 2 policemen and one civilian were killed Saturday in three unrelated incidents, police said.
