BAGHDAD, May 14: Iraqi insurgents killed at least 14 people in urban bombings on Saturday, while families hid in their homes or fled to the desert to escape heavy fighting between US troops and rebels near the Syrian border. A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a police convoy in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10, the interior ministry said.

“I was riding in one of the cars in the convoy when a car overtook us and exploded against the leading patrol car,” policeman Mustafa Rasul said. Five Iraqis were also killed when a suicide bomber drove a motorbike at a joint US-Iraqi convoy on the road between Tuz Kharmatu and Sulayman Beg, south of the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Wali said.

Earlier, three civilians believed to be street cleaners were killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad’s southern district of Dura, hospital officials said. In the main northern city of Mosul, two civilians died and a policeman was hurt in a suicide bombing targeting a joint Iraqi-US patrol, said Major Mohammed Fathi.

Meanwhile, US marines said they had lost nine men in a week-old sweep for insurgents in the west of the country, their largest operation since a spectacular assault on the rebel enclave of Fallujah last November. “Operation Matador” was launched on May 7 near the Syrian border. US commanders say insurgents get much of their weaponry and foreign volunteers by way of Syria, an accusation denied by Damascus.

An Iraqi defence official said on Saturday that US forces had surrounded Al-Qaim.—AFP