December 09, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 28, 1428

BAGHDAD, Dec 8: Another spate of bloodshed involving a suicide bomber, a rocket attack and a US military operation left at least 22 people dead across Iraq on Saturday, police and the military said.

Six people were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed car into a police building in Iraq’s northern oil refinery town of Baiji, a security official said.

The bomber attacked the headquarters of the quick reaction force in Baiji, north of Tikrit, the home town of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, an official from the US-Iraqi operated Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) office in the town said.

The JCC oversees security in the province of Salaheddin, of which Tikrit is the capital.

The rocket attack, in which a missile slammed into the home of a local leader of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement, killed the activist, his wife and two children, police said.

Uday Hamid Ali, from Sadr’s office in the town of Al-Nuamaniyah, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad in Wasit province, died with his family when the rocket hit their house, police officer Ali Fadhel said.

A medic at Nuamaniyah hospital confirmed receiving their bodies.

US air and ground assault teams, meanwhile, killed 12 suspected Al Qaeda militants and detained 13 in raids across Iraq on Saturday, the American military said.

Ten suspected militants were killed near Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, in an operation targeting Al Qaeda members, a statement said.

In two other separate raids two more suspected militants were killed and a large amount of weapons were found, it said, adding the raids also led to detentions of 13 other suspected militants.

Iraqi troops backed by a group of local anti-Qaeda front captured a suspected Al Qaeda militant in Baghdad’s Sunni stronghold of Adhamiyah on Saturday.

Mohammed Abu Shareb was arrested in Adhamiyah’s Najib Basha area and is accused of “murders, rapes and displacing local people,” said Captain Hisham of Iraqi army giving only his first name.

Iraqi police raided a village near the hometown of Saddam Hussein in the hunt for his deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the most wanted former regime official still on the run, an official said on Saturday.—AFP