Baghdad bomber kills seven a year after Saddam caught

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber killed at least seven Iraqis at an entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone government and US diplomatic compound on Monday, a year to the day since US forces captured Saddam Hussein.

At least 17 people were also wounded, civilian hospital staff said. The US military said no US soldiers were hurt.

It was not clear if any of the Iraqi National Guard troops which also man the checkpoint had been killed or wounded.

"We had stopped in the car when all we felt was a car explode next to us," said one injured Iraqi civilian at the city's busy Yarmuk hospital, his face caked with blood.

"A suicide bomber hit Checkpoint 12. It's pretty ugly," a US officer told Reuters inside the Green Zone.

Iraqi police said the bomber drove a car and a US military spokeswoman said several other cars were also destroyed.

The checkpoint, close to the main airport highway, is on a main entrance to the sprawling complex which was Saddam's presidential palace. It now houses the US and other embassies and the offices of the US-backed Iraqi interim government.

Reuters correspondents saw smoke pouring from the area, which was sealed off by troops. Helicopters circled overhead.

The blast, at 9 am local time, just when many Iraqis would be going to work in the Zone, shook buildings across Baghdad.

At the civilian Yarmuk hospital, a senior doctor said they had received seven bodies and were treating 17 wounded. Staff wheeled in a wounded man as doctors sewed up the bloodied hand of a young woman whose head was bandaged.

Monday is the first anniversary of the capture of Saddam by US forces after eight months on the run. At that time, US President George W. Bush and US military commanders hoped the former president's arrest would puncture guerrilla activity among his former supporters in the Sunni Arab minority.

However, violence has continued unabated and the death rate among US troops has risen since Saddam was dragged from a hiding hole in farmland near his home town of Tikrit.

Seven US Marines were killed in two separate incidents west of Baghdad on Sunday, the US military said.

It said they were killed in Anbar province, a region which includes the violent towns of Falluja and Ramadi, but it gave no further details of the heaviest daily death toll for US troops since the end of their all-out offensive on Falluja last month.

US and Iraqi officials fear violence could increase, despite the offensive against rebel strongholds in Falluja, in the run up to a national election on January 30.

The vote, Iraq's first fully free election, is expected to consolidate power for the long-oppressed 60-per cent Shi'ite Muslim minority at the expense of Saddam's fellow Sunnis.

Iraq's figurehead interim president, Sunni tribal leader Ghazi Yawar, warned continued violence and occupation could cause serious problems if Iraqis felt "humiliated".

"This could in the long term create an environment in which an Iraqi Hitler could emerge like the one created by the defeat of Germany and the humiliation of Germans in World War One," Yawar told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

There were sharp clashes in the east of Falluja on Sunday and US officers say the city is still not safe enough for some 200,000 local people to return home. US jets bombed the east of the city on Sunday and residents heard sustained gunfire.

The nearby town of Ramadi remains a bastion of the insurgency, where clashes with US troops are frequent.

"There has been some sporadic fighting in Falluja," Marine Captain Brad Gordon told Reuters after Sunday's fighting.

"There is no telling at this time if it is fighters that had eluded the (US) forces to this point or if they are insurgents that have found a way to get back into the city.

"(US) forces have secured the city, but still have not deemed it 'completely safe'."

The seven dead on Sunday took the total of US troops killed in action since the invasion of Iraq 21 months ago to at least 1,015 and the total US dead to 1,290.

More than 70 US troops were killed in fighting that followed the storming of Falluja on November 8. US commanders say they killed some 1,600 guerrillas there, depriving Sunni rebels and foreign Islamists of a base before next month's election.

Some of Saddam's old lieutenants went on hunger strike on Saturday over access to lawyers and fears of being handed over to Iraqis after the election, their lawyers said.

The 67-year-old former president, held separately from his former aides, was not among those who were refusing some food.

Former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, once Saddam's urbane envoy to the outside world, and former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan were among dozens refusing food, Aziz's lawyer said. Nearly all of the 55 "most wanted" Iraqis sought by US troops after the war are held at a secret location.

- REUTERS