7 Iraqi Police Killed at Checkpoints

Gunmen killed seven Iraqi policemen in a pair of attacks west of Baghdad, officials said Monday, and missiles were fired at two U.S. bases with no reported casualties.

The seven policemen were slain at checkpoints around the city of Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, on Sunday. Iraqi police who reported the attacks did not mention any insurgent casualties.

A rocket was fired at the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition Monday night in Baghdad. It exploded harmlessly in a parking lot near the Republican Palace, used by administrator L. Paul Bremer III.

In Kirkuk, two projectiles exploded for a second straight day at a U.S. military base, Iraqi police said, but with no reports of damage or casualties.

Attacks against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies have persisted despite the Dec. 13 arrest of ousted President Saddam Hussein. Many of the victims have been civilians.

One Iraqi man was killed Monday when he stepped on a roadside bomb as he got off a bus in a Baghdad suburb, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps 2nd Lt. Mustafa Tariq said. The explosion wounded three other passengers, one critically, he said.

Late Monday, a roadside bomb exploded in a western Baghdad neighborhood, wounding one civilian, witnesses said.

In the north, military divers searched the muddy waters of the Tigris River for three missing U.S. soldiers, including two pilots of an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter that crashed Sunday in Mosul.