From Mission To Mess

In the town of Khan Bani Saad, a car sped towards a police station and detonated as Iraqi police opened fire on it, US soldiers at the scene said. Captain Ryan McCormack said six police and three civilians were killed, along with the bomber.

Another suicide bomber targeted the main police headquarters in the nearby town of Baquba, 65 km north of Baghdad. At least four policemen and two civilians were killed, hospital officials said. The town’s hospital was filled with seriously wounded Iraqis, and blood was pooled on the floor. Trucks brought in several mutilated bodies.

The mayor of Khan Bani Saad said guerrillas had made numerous threats to Iraqis cooperating with the Americans. ‘‘We received threats every day that there would be bombings,’’ Nayef Al-Zaydi said. ‘‘They even threatened to blow up the primary school.’’

Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, a member of Iraq’s US-appointed Governing Council and head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a leading Shi’ite party, was also targeted in a rocket attack on Friday, his son said.

‘‘It was a terrorist attack on his life by remnants of Saddam’s regime,’’ Mohsen Al-Hakim said in Tehran. He said a rocket was fired from a nearby garden as his father was in a mosque but failed to explode.

At Baghdad international airport, DHL officials said the Airbus A300 had taken off and returned to make an emergency landing after an engine fire. Over the past month, five helicopters have been shot down, killing 49 soldiers.—Reuters