Suicide Bombing Kills 17 in North Iraq

Insurgents staged a drive-by shooting Tuesday to lure police to a liquor store in Kirkuk and then exploded a car bomb amid a police convoy, killing 17 people on a street packed with shoppers and rush-hour commuters.

It was the deadliest incident in Iraq on a day when a mortar round fired by insurgents in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, landed harmlessly about 300 yards from a ceremony led by the U.S. ambassador and the top American general in the country.

Officials reported the deaths of three more American service members, bringing the U.S. military death toll to 2,100 since the March 2003 invasion that toppled Hussein. The latest 100 American deaths have been reported over the last 28 days.

Nine of the Iraqis killed in Kirkuk were policemen, whose ranks in the tense northern city suffered five combat deaths last week. Hospital officials said the death toll was expected to rise because many of the 25 people wounded in Tuesday’s blast, including four policemen, were in critical condition.

Brig. Sarhad Qader, a police official in Kirkuk, said at least two gunmen in a red Volkswagen opened fire on the liquor store shortly after sunset. As four police vehicles -- a Land Cruiser followed by three pickup trucks -- raced to the scene, a suicide bomber in an Opel sedan overtook the last two pickups and detonated his car about 15 yards from the store.

“A speeding car came, and a huge fiery explosion shook the area,” said Mohammed Khalid, who was shopping at a bakery and watched his parked car and several others catch fire. “I saw bodies flying through the air.”

Motorists whose vehicles escaped damage helped police and ambulance workers ferry the wounded to Kirkuk’s main hospital, he said.

Loqman Abdulla, a hospital official, said the dead included several children and some bodies were burned beyond recognition.

Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, is home to an uneasy mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens who stake rival claims to the city and nearby oil reserves. Violence there and in other parts of Iraq has been rising in the run-up to the Dec. 15 election.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber detonated his car at a checkpoint on the south edge of Kirkuk, wounding three Iraqi soldiers.

The three American soldiers whose deaths were reported Tuesday included one killed the day before in a roadside bombing near Habbaniya, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, where he was serving with the 2nd Marine Division. The two others, with Task Force Freedom, were killed Saturday by small-arms fire while on patrol in Mosul, about 225 miles northwest of the capital.

Tuesday’s attack in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, occurred as a U.S. Army colonel was giving a speech outdoors at one of Hussein’s former palace complexes to mark its hand-over to the Iraqi government. A mortar round whistled as it landed nearby but failed to explode.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey, and other officials ducked into the nearest palace. U.S. combat helicopters swooped in, and an Iraqi interpreter with the Americans shouted in Arabic: “Do not worry! If there is more shooting, the American troops will return fire!”

The dignitaries emerged minutes later to continue the ceremony, but it was cut short. Khalilzad shrugged off the attack as part of “a phenomenon existing in the country. We are used to it,” news agencies reported.

The Tikrit Palace complex, on 1,000 acres overlooking the Tigris River, has served as a division headquarters for the U.S. military since April 2003. Built in 1991 for Hussein’s mother, it is considered the largest and most elaborate structure erected during his rule.

The complex is the largest of 29 bases relinquished by the U.S.-led coalition this year as part of an effort to lower the American military profile in Iraq’s urban areas and ease Iraqi criticism of the U.S. presence. Hamid Hamoud Qaisi, the provincial governor, received a symbolic key to the complex, and his deputy hoisted the Iraqi flag.

“They will be used as palaces for the people and as tourist sites,” said the governor, who pleaded with reporters not to mention the mortar attack.

*

Times special correspondent Ali Windawi in Kirkuk and a special correspondent in Tikrit contributed to this report.