Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 16 December 2003 — At least nine people were killed and 17 wounded in two almost simultaneous car bombs yesterday at Baghdad police stations in a reminder of the violence still plaguing Iraq after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Stations to the west and north of the Iraqi capital came under attack, police said, a day after US forces announced they had found the ousted president. Police stations are a favorite target of guerrillas fighting the US-led occupation of Iraq.

A suicide car bomb killed nine people and wounded 13 when it exploded at the Al Zuhour police station in the town of Al Hussainiya just north of Baghdad, the station commander, Lt. Col. Amer Nahe, told reporters. “We have nine persons killed,” he said on the steps of the damaged building.

He said the dead included eight sergeants and one officer. “The number of wounded is difficult to know because many officers were on their way home, but for now we can say 13.” About 170 people work at the post.

Another officer, Maj. Adnan Muslim, said three of the wounded were civilians.

Muslim and Nahe said the attack happened about 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) when a Toyota taxi passed through a barbed wire barricade more than 20 meters from the station.

One officer tried unsuccessfully to block the car before it sped up and passed through concrete blocks in the narrow residential and shopping street, they said.

At about the same time another car bomb exploded and wounded four policemen at a special operations center on the western edge of the capital, police said.

“At approximately 8:30 two cars tried to force their way into the police station,” police Capt. Sinin Jamel said at the Al-Amiriya suburb. “One of them exploded,” he said. Another officer said four of his colleagues were hurt, including one seriously wounded in the eyes.