Surge of suicide blasts kills 27

Men wounded in a car bomb blast rest at a hospital in Hillah, Iraq, 60 miles south of Baghdad, Monday, June 25, 2007. A suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint near the governor's offices in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Hillah, killing at least eight people and wounding 31, police said. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)

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Associated Press BAGHDAD (AP) - A suicide bomber who penetrated layers of security blew himself up in the busy lobby of a leading Baghdad hotel today, killing at least nine people, including a U.S.-allied tribal sheik, police reported. The attack, in which 16 others were wounded, was just one in a surge of five suicide and other bombings today that killed at least 29 people across Iraq. In an equally deadly attack, a suicide truck bomber targeted an Iraqi police station shared with U.S. troops in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, killing nine people. There were no American casualties in that blast, the U.S. command said. The bombing at the high-rise Mansour Hotel, on the west bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, struck at about noon as the lobby bustled with members of news media organizations headquartered at the hotel and other guests, witnesses said. A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby, approached the reception desk and detonated his bomb, police reported. "It was a great breach of security because there are three checkpoints, one outside and two inside," said hotel worker Saif al-Rubaie, 28, who witnessed the blast and said all the casualties were Iraqis, most employees in the reception area. Police said the dead included Fassal al-Guood, a Ramadi tribal sheik and former governor of Anbar province who was a leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, which has partnered with U.S. and Iraqi officials to fight al-Qaida influence in Anbar. A noted Iraqi poet, Rahim al-Maliki, also was killed, said Iraqi Media Net, the government organization on whose television network al-Maliki appeared. The Mansour, which also houses the Chinese Embassy and is the Baghdad home for a number of Iraqi parliament members, is just a half-mile from the heavily fortified International Zone, where the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices are situated. The attack was the fifth in a string of suicide and other bombings Monday morning, from Mosul and Beiji in the north to Hillah in the south. Two were aimed at U.S. targets, but no U.S. casualties were reported. Besides nine dead, the truck bombing at the Beiji wounded at least 21 others, police and medical officials reported. American troops share the post with the local police, on the main road in central Beiji. One wounded man said random gunfire came from the building after the blast. "I was at the grocery market when the explosion occurred and I ran with others to the site to see if there were any casualties and I was shot by fire from police station," said Khalaf Salim, 40. About 45 minutes later, another suicide car bomb exploded at a joint U.S.-Iraqi army checkpoint in central Siniyah, nine miles west of Beiji, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding three others, an Iraqi army officer reported. Eyewitnesses said a U.S. Humvee vehicle was damaged in the blast, but "there were no U.S. casualties in both incidents," said Spc. Brian Bucy, a spokesman for Task Force Lightning, the U.S. military command covering the Beiji area. Earlier in the morning, a suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint near the governor's offices in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Hillah, killing at least eight people and wounding 31, police said. It was the second such attack in Hillah in three days. A parked car packed with explosives blew up on Saturday in the center of the city, 60 miles south of Baghdad, killing two people. Three of the eight killed in the 6:30 a.m. explosion were policemen, as were at least four of the wounded, said a spokesman for the provincial police department. The attacker drove his car into a checkpoint that leads to the headquarters of the Babil provincial government. Police officer Baha Abdul-Sadda, 21, said he saw a red sedan speeding toward the headquarters, surprising police at the checkpoint and on the building's roof. "The suicide bomber took advantage of the early hour and intended to hit the metal barrier to get inside to hit the building, but the car exploded prematurely at the metal barrier," he said. Abdul-Sadda, who suffered a head injury when thrown against a wall by the blast, spoke from his hospital bed. Hillah, the capital of Babil, has been the target of some of the deadliest car bomb attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim extremists in the four years of insurgency and sectarian killings in Iraq. The fifth bomb was in a parked car that exploded in the center of the northern city of Mosul, killing one civilian and wounding 20 others, police Brig. Mohammed al-Wakaa said. He said there were no police or military targets at the site. In other violence, two mortar rounds Monday morning struck Baghdad's Fadhil district, a Sunni enclave in the central city, killing two civilians and wounding three others, police said. Iraqi police and other authorities often speak only on condition of anonymity, because of concerns over personal security or because they are not authorized to divulge information. --- Associated Press Writer Hamed Ahmed contributed to this report. © Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.