A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman killed at least 10 people when he blew his car up at an Iraqi police headquarters, as Ukraine said it would pull out its 1650 troops from the war-torn country.Violence around the country killed at least 23 people on Thursday, including two US soldiers, but the deadliest attack occurred when the bomber managed to drive his explosives-rigged car into the main police compound in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit as police gathered for their morning parade. The director of Tikrit hospital, Emad Juburi, said they had received 10 dead and 35 wounded, all policemen. "The suicide bomber managed to get into the headquarters' courtyard because he was wearing a police lieutenant's uniform. He detonated his vehicle in the middle of police who had gathered for the morning parade," Juburi said, citing the accounts of survivors.
In a potential blow to the US-led coalition in Iraq, the sixth-largest foreign military contingent in the country, Ukraine, said it would pull all of its 1650 troops out of the country by the end of the year. "I believe that our troops will be withdrawn this year," Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko as saying. New pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko promised during his election campaign late last year to pull Ukrainian troops out of Iraq, where 18 of their number have been killed. A Ukrainian withdrawal is sure to displease Washington, with Poland already having decided to pull out a third of its 2400 soldiers because of strong domestic opposition to their deployment. The United States, which backed Yushchenko during the "orange revolution" standoff with Leonid Kuchma's regime that eventually brought him to power, has said any withdrawal should be made gradually and in a coordinated way. Kuchma opposed the US-led war in Iraq but later agreed to deploy troops there in what observers said was an attempt to mend fences with Washington, which accused him of approving a sale of military equipment to Saddam's regime despite an international embargo.
In Germany, a court martial which convicted three British soldiers of abusing Iraqi civilians near the main southern city of Basra was due to deliver sentences on Friday. The soldiers face jail terms of up to two years after being found guilty of abusing suspected looters in May 2003. The Times newspaper in London reported that as many as 11 more British soldiers could face a court martial over the case of a fatal beating of an Iraqi civilian and other allegations of abuse.
In Paris, a reporters rights group said French journalist Florence Aubenas and her translator Hussein Hanoun, who disappeared in Iraq 50 days ago, are alive. "They are probably being held outside Baghdad. Right now, by a loose and unidentified group. There's been no claim and there is no established intermediary," said Robert Menard of Reporters Without Borders.
In further violence, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and one wounded when mortar fire hit their base in Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, while two Iraqi policemen and a child were killed in a car bombing south of the capital. Four more Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bomb attack at Qaim, near the Syrian-Iraqi border, while in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, a police chief escaped an assassination attempt in which two other policemen were killed.
The US military said two of its soldiers had been killed in separate bomb blasts north of Baghdad. Their deaths brought to 1476 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to a Pentagon tally. And the bodies of two Iraqi brothers who worked as interpreters for the US army were found near Baiji, north of Baghdad, having been shot in the head.
As continued insurgent attacks on Iraq's fledgling security forces put back the possibility of US-led troops leaving the country to fend for itself, persistent sabotage of Iraqi oil infrastructure have damaged the economy. But the Iraqi government said a top aide to Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been arrested in Baquba, north of Baghdad. "The terrorist Mohammed Najm Ibrahim, alias Mohammed Najm, who with one of his brothers runs a Zarqawi cell, is responsible for the beheading of several citizens and for attacks against Iraqi security forces," a statement said.
An oil ministry spokesperson said exports from the northern oilfields around Kirkuk through the Turkish port of Ceyhan were ready to resume after earlier sabotage had been repaired, but that no date had yet been set. Assem Jihad said rebels had carried out two more attacks on oil and gas pipelines on Wednesday. Insurgent sabotage has cost Iraq between seven and eight billion dollars in lost revenues since the 2003 invasion, according to ministry estimates.