BAGHDAD, Nov 7: A suicide car bomber killed nine people, including six Iraqi policemen, in the southern Dora district of Baghdad on Monday. A further 10 people were wounded in the attack, which targeted a police patrol in an area that is known as a turbulent district of the city.

The attack came a few hours after mortar bombs killed four people and wounded six more near a university in the east of the capital.

OPERATION: One US marine and 17 alleged Al Qaeda fighters were killed as US and Iraqi forces moved house-to-house on Monday in their fight to take control of a town near the border with Syria.

Around 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and 2,500 US troops launched the sweep, called Operation Steel Curtain, early on Saturday in the far western Iraqi town of Husayba in an attempt to flush Al Qaeda fighters from the region.

“While conducting clearing operations in Husayba, (the marine) was killed by enemy small arms fire,” the military said.

The marine’s death brings to 2,047 the number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

The US military said that in addition to the 17 suspected guerillas who have been killed since Steel Curtain began, ‘many more are suspected of being killed, but coalition forces haven’t been able to confirm those numbers yet’.

Iraqi and American soldiers are ‘clearing the city, house by house, as the Al Qaeda in Iraq-led insurgents continue to plant improvised explosive devices throughout the city and fire on the marines and Iraqi soldiers’, the military said.—Reuters/AFP