Post by Salem6 on Jan 31, 2004 10:32:59 GMT
A car bomb outside a police station in the Iraqi city of Mosul has killed at least nine and injured 45.
Witnesses described a scene of carnage with torn bodies strewn on the ground outside the station near the campus of the northern city's university.
Black smoke hung above the building, which had been packed with police coming in to receive their salaries.
Some 300 Iraqi policemen have been killed by militants since the US-led coalition took control last year.
Tense area
According to unconfirmed local reports, a car drove through a security barricade in front of the police station before exploding.
One policeman quoted on condition of anonymity by AP news agency said the blast was so powerful that there were casualties even inside the police station building.
A US military spokesman in the city, Major Hugh Cate, confirmed that none of the casualties were US troops as American and Iraqi rescue teams worked at the scene.
Mosul, about 365 kilometres (225 miles) north-west of Baghdad, is Iraq's third largest city and a Sunni Muslim stronghold where tensions exist between the Arabic and Kurdish communities.
There have been frequent attacks on US troops in the city, although rarely on the scale seen in parts of the "Sunni triangle" closer to Baghdad.
Video:-
The BBC's Caroline Hawley
"Iraqi police stations have been targeted frequently"
news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/39805000/rm/_39805491_iraq10_hawley_2wy_vi.ram
Witnesses described a scene of carnage with torn bodies strewn on the ground outside the station near the campus of the northern city's university.
Black smoke hung above the building, which had been packed with police coming in to receive their salaries.
Some 300 Iraqi policemen have been killed by militants since the US-led coalition took control last year.
Tense area
According to unconfirmed local reports, a car drove through a security barricade in front of the police station before exploding.
One policeman quoted on condition of anonymity by AP news agency said the blast was so powerful that there were casualties even inside the police station building.
A US military spokesman in the city, Major Hugh Cate, confirmed that none of the casualties were US troops as American and Iraqi rescue teams worked at the scene.
Mosul, about 365 kilometres (225 miles) north-west of Baghdad, is Iraq's third largest city and a Sunni Muslim stronghold where tensions exist between the Arabic and Kurdish communities.
There have been frequent attacks on US troops in the city, although rarely on the scale seen in parts of the "Sunni triangle" closer to Baghdad.
Video:-
The BBC's Caroline Hawley
"Iraqi police stations have been targeted frequently"
news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/39805000/rm/_39805491_iraq10_hawley_2wy_vi.ram