A car bomb exploded this morning at a police station in a town west of Baghdad, killing around 17 people and injuring around 33.The attack in Khaldiyah, about 80 km from Baghdad, occurred at around 9 am near the main police station. Many of the injured are police officers.The blast, suspected to be a suicide bombing, left a thick cloud of black smoke rising into the sky over the restive village. Pools of blood, shattered glass and scattered shoes littered the street. There were no Americans or allied foreign soldiers among the casualties. Meanwhile, US troops and several Bradley-armoured vehicles and tanks stood off about 50 metres (yards) from station, with soldiers stepping in to break up a confrontation between Iraqi police and about 200 local demonstrators who chanted ‘‘yes, yes to Saddam’’.The remains of a twisted car lay outside the two-storey station. A stone wall around the structure appeared to have borne the brunt of the blast which destroyed parts of it.US Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Swisher told reporters at the scene that there was ‘‘some evidence’’ of a suicide bomber.A US military spokesman in Baghdad said there were no casualties among US or foreign allied forces.Ambulances and rescue workers ferried the casualties to a hospital in the town of Ramadi, 110 km west of the capital. The area, dominated by Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority, is a focus of support for former President Saddam Hussein.The bomb was the latest in a string of attacks on Iraqi police and other targets seen as cooperating with the US-led occupation. Scores of Iraqis have been killed.US-led forces in Iraq have also come under daily attacks since the end of the war that toppled Saddam in April. Several police targets have come under attack, including in Khalidiyah and Ramadi, before. The US-appointed police chief in Khalidiyah was killed in September.
