Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 1 February 2004 — Violence took a toll of at least 12 lives yesterday as Iraqis prepared to celebrate the Eid Al-Adha. A car bomb targeting a police station killed nine people and injured 45, while three American soldiers died when a roadside bomb ripped through their convoy near the Kirkuk.

Witnesses in Mosul said a man who appeared to be a suicide attacker drove through a security barricade in front of the police station before blowing up his vehicle outside the building. Officials confirmed a car bomb but would not say if it was a suicide attack.

In Kirkuk, a homemade bomb exploded as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed by about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of the city, killing the three soldiers, the US military said. Their names were not released. The deaths raised to 522 the number of US soldiers killed in the Iraq conflict.

It was pay day and the two-story police station in Mosul was crowded with staff at the time of the midmorning bomb attack, said police Lt. Mohammed Fadil.

Severed limbs, some of them smoldering, and decapitated bodies were seen in the bloodied street in front of the police station. Windows of buildings were shattered and pieces of burning car wreckage spewing acrid black smoke littered the streets. At least five cars were destroyed.

Lt. Ahmed Abdul Kader, 30, who was inside the police station, said he was thrown in the air” with the force of the blast. “I fell to the ground and hit my head. I could not get up. There were people with horrible injuries all around me,” said Kader.

Stunned survivors stumbled down the street, their clothing soaked in blood.

A huge crater was gouged out by the blast.

The attacks came on the eve of the Eid Al-Adha. Guerrillas have often struck on significant dates — a car bomb destroyed a Baghdad restaurant on New Year’s Eve, killing eight, and on Oct. 27, the first day of Ramadan, coordinated suicide attacks in Baghdad killed at least 35.

Despite the violence, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said experts will arrive within days to assess the feasibility of elections before a June 30 deadline for the handover of sovereignty from the US-led coalition to an Iraqi government.

UN international staff left Iraq last year after suicide attacks on its headquarters in Baghdad, including one on Aug. 19 that killed 22 people including the head of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello.

The UN electoral team will spend several weeks traveling the country to assess whether it would be possible to hold a free and fair national poll.

US authorities in Iraq have said they will listen to UN recommendations, but the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, said yesterday no one would necessarily be bound by any advice the UN offers.