February 12, 2007	Monday	Muharram 23, 1428

TIKRIT (Iraq), Feb 11: Insurgents launched deadly assaults on Iraqi and US forces in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 34 people, while security forces pressed on with a major crackdown in Baghdad.

In the bloodiest attack, a suicide bomber detonated explosives hidden in an animal feed truck outside a police station near Tikrit, killing 17 people including 12 policemen and prisoners and wounding 20 more, police said.

Further north near the Syrian border, insurgents ambushed a bus carrying new recruits from the Iraqi border security force, gunning down eight of them.

The violence in northern Iraq served as a grim reminder that while US and Iraqi forces are conducting an energetic new operation to stifle sectarian bloodshed in the capital, the provinces are far from safe.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Hur Baz said 17 people were killed when the bomb hidden in the feed lorry destroyed his headquarters in the town of Ad-Dawr, a hotbed of support for Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

More than 20 people were wounded -- including police, detainees and civilian visitors -- and rescue teams were searching through the rubble, he said.

At least four other people died in three attacks in Tikrit itself and in Baquba, the violent capital of Diyala province, security sources said.

The eight guards had signed up in the border town of Rabiaa and were heading south to their new base when gunmen raked their minibus with automatic weapons, killing all aboard, regional official Jassim Mohammed said.

Separate attacks in the nearby provincial capital of Mosul killed five people, including three policemen, medical official Mohammed Ahmed said.

Closer to the capital, in Diyala province, a US soldier was killed in a battle between his unit and insurgents, the military said in a statement.—AFP