A suicide car bomber attacked a police convoy in Baghdad on Friday as guerrillas kept pressure on Iraq’s US-backed security forces despite a bloody rout of insurgents in Falluja.CNN reported that five policeman and a bystander were killed and at least five people wounded, police said.Iraqi and US troops raided a major Sunni mosque in the capital after Friday prayers, killing or seizing several people, according to local witnesses. Four people were killed and 14 wounded, hospital sources said after National Guards backed by US troops tried to storm the Hanifa mosque. Witnesses said worshippers threw shoes at the troops and soldiers opened fire and threw percussion grenades.The raid followed more than 100 arrests in a Sunni area of Baghdad the day before, when police said they detained some militants suspected of escaping Falluja.In Mosul, an unexplained fire destroyed voter registration papers and other materials being stored at a warehouse. A car bomb in the city wounded a US soldier, while an Iraqi policeman was killed late on Thursday in a mortar attack on a police station at Muqdidiya.Special police commandos and US soldiers detained three people at a Mosul hospital. US troops, who said on Friday they had found headless and dismembered bodies near one wrecked police station, have brought more units of Iraq’s paramilitary National Guard to help them control Mosul.The Al Qaeda-allied Islamist group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the public beheading in Mosul on Thursday of two National Guard officers.US military officials said on Thursday they had discovered a house in Falluja that appears to have been a headquarters for al-Zarqawi’s guerrillas. Marines continued to scour the rubble-strewn streets in Falluja for remnants of the rebel force, after 10 days of battle.Meanwhile, in a report published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Army said that an unexpectedly high number of US soldiers injured in West Asia and Afghanistan are testing positive for a rare, hard-to-treat blood infection in military hospitals. A total of 102 soldiers were found to be infected with the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. It is not known where the soldiers contracted the infections. —Reuters
