BAGHDAD, July 19: A suicide bomber blew up a fuel truck near a Baghdad police station on Monday, killing 10 people, wounding 62 and destroying cars and buildings.

In the latest assassination of senior bureaucrats, an official of Iraq's defence ministry was shot dead outside his home by three gunmen on Sunday night _ a day after a failed attempt on the life of the justice minister, which killed five bodyguards.

Monday's suicide bombing was the fifth suicide attack over the past week aimed at Iraqi police, National Guard or senior members of the country's new government. Thirty-five people have lost their lives in the incidents.

A car bomb outside the headquarters of the US military and the interim government in Baghdad last week killed 11 people and another outside a National Guard garrison, 200kms northwest of Baghdad, killed 10.

A suicide bomber tried to assassinate Iraq's justice minister on Saturday and the governor of the northern Nineveh province was assassinated in an attack on his convoy last week.

'COPTER CRASHES: The British military said one of its helicopters had crashed in a suspected accident in Basra on Monday, killing one airman and injuring two others. "A helicopter crashed inside the airstrip in Basra," said Major David Steel. -Reuters/AFP