BAGHDAD: At least 43 people were killed in a string of attacks on Iraqi security forces and other targets on Tuesday after Osama Bin Laden declared fugitive Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his "emir" in the country. In one of a series of apparently coordinated strikes in Sunni Muslim strongholds north of Baghdad, insurgents stormed a police station in Dijla between Tikrit and Samarra and gunned down 12 policemen, police said. "Armed men took control of the police station and executed 12 policemen, three of them officers," one police source said. Another four policeman and a national guard were shot dead at a police station in Ishaki, south of the restive town of Samarra. Three guardsmen and three civilians were killed in a car bomb attack targeting a US-Iraq military convoy in Samarra, hospital sources said.The US military confirmed a car bombing near a tank but said it had no record of the deaths and that there were no US casualties. In Baquba, 50 kilometres northeast of the capital, six national guardsmen were killed in a suicide car bomb attack. At Al-Shurqat, 180 kilometres north of Samarra, two policeman were killed in an attack on their post, an officer said. In Baghdad, a suicide bomber was killed and six people wounded in an attack against the convoy of an Iraqi national guard general Modher Abud as he was leaving his home, the interior ministry said. Another policeman was killed in Balad when insurgents opened fire on security forces guarding a voter registration centre.
The latest bloodshed brought to at least 74 the number of people killed in attacks throughout the country since Sunday evening, including two US soldiers. Islamic militants announced on Tuesday that they had executed eight Iraqi employees of an American security and reconstruction company, saying that the victims had supported the US-led occupation. Two were set free. The 10 employees of the Sandi Group were believed to have been kidnapped on Dec 13 by gunmen claiming to belong to the Mujahideen Army, The Black Banner Brigade, and the Mutassim Bellah Brigade. The body of a senior Iraqi provincial official was found riddled with bullets in the rebel bastion of Ramadi on Tuesday hours after his kidnapping by unknown gunmen, a police source said.