BAQUBA, Aug 23: A suicide bomber killed a US soldier, an American contractor and four Iraqi security guards at a joint coordination centre in a town north of Baghdad on Tuesday.

The attack in Baquba also wounded nine US soldiers, four Iraqi police officers and six civilians, the US military said.

Such attacks have raised fears that guerillas seeking to topple the government are infiltrating the Iraqi military and security forces.

The Baquba violence came after three car bombs exploded in quick succession near US forces in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, in an apparently coordinated strike by guerillas.

Saddam in court: Saddam Hussein met his lawyer and the chief judge investigating charges against him on Tuesday and confirmed that the rest of his legal team had been sacked.

“The judge asked president Saddam Hussein about his family’s statement that his legal team had been fired and he confirmed it,” Khalil Dulaimi, the only lawyer authorized to represent the toppled Iraqi leader, said.

Saddam Hussein’s family scrapped the international team of attorneys claiming to represent him and will pick a new set of heavyweight lawyers to defend him against war crimes charges, his family’s lawyer, Abdel Haq Alani, said this month.

He said Saddam’s family had revoked any right of attorney previously issued to any lawyers to represent the ex-president, and had chosen Mr Dulaimi as the ‘only authorized lawyer at this moment’.

Mr Alani said Saddam’s family had been irked by press statements from Arab and Western lawyers and propagandists who claimed to speak on behalf of the ousted leader, including high-profile lawyers from France, Britain and the United States.

More than 2,000 lawyers had volunteered for Saddam’s defence team, including former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.

Accused of torturing and killing thousands of Iraqis, Saddam Hussein is expected to be put on trial for his life within two months.

So far, he has been formally charged in only one case — the mass killing of Shias in the village of Dujail following a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982. If found guilty, he faces the death penalty.

The special tribunal trying Saddam Hussein released a photograph of him, Mr Dulaimi and Ra’id Juhi, the young judge investigating accusations that Saddam committed crimes against humanity during three decades of rule.

Mr Dulaimi said he held four hours of talks with Saddam Hussein, who is in Iraqi legal custody but is in US physical custody on the outskirts of Baghdad. —Reuters