BAGHDAD, June 7: At least 19 people were killed in bomb attacks on Iraqi security forces on Thursday, nine of them in the suicide truck bombing of a police station near the Syrian border in the northwest of the country.

“The bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the building after police opened fire on him,” Brigadier General Mohammed al-Waga said.

He said five police officers were among the dead in the attack in Rabiaa, which also left 22 people wounded, 15 of them police.

At least two civilians were killed in another apparently botched attack on police in the capital of the restive western province of Al-Anbar, police said.

“A suicide bomber drove his truck at a police checkpoint in the Zangora district in western Ramadi,” police Lieutenant Colonel Jobair Rashid said.

“Police shot at him but the truck exploded. Two civilians were killed and six people wounded, including a policeman,” he added.

Another car bombing near an army checkpoint in Baghdad's northwestern Shiite district of Talbiyah killed four people and wounded 14, security sources said.

Also in the capital, two suicide bombers -- one in a car and the other in a truck -- killed four people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and wounded five in the Abu Ghraib area, the US military said.

The twin attacks almost completely destroyed the Hassenein al-Mushtaba Shiite mosque and severely damaged the Al-Marat Sunni mosque, the statement said.--AFP