Insurgent Attacks Kill 6 People in Northern Iraq

Iraqi officials say insurgent attacks in and around the northern city of Mosul have killed four policemen and two civilians.

In one attack Saturday, a car bomb killed four Iraqi policemen and a civilian in Hamdaniya, a Christian town 30 kilometers east of Mosul. It was the first attack of its kind in the town since the Iraq war began.

In another incident, a mortar shell landed in Mosul, in the city’s Bab al-Baidh district, killing an Iraqi reporter, Abdul-Khaliq Nasir, who worked for a local newspaper, Um al-Rabyain.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military says coalition forces killed six suspected terrorists in operations around Iraq today and Friday. It also says two American soldiers were killed today by gunfire, one in the northeastern province of Diyala, and the other in southern Baghdad.

In another development, a U.S. military panel in Iraq convicted an American soldier Friday of planting evidence on a body to make it appear as if the dead person was an insurgent.

The panel found the soldier, Sgt. Jorge G. Sandoval of Laredo, Texas, guilty of placing detonation wire on the body of the unidentified male in April. The offense carries a prison sentence of between six months and five years.

The soldier was acquitted of the more serious charge of murdering the man. He also was found not guilty of murder in the death of another unidentified male in Iraq in May.

The U.S. military also confirmed today that it carried out an air strike in southern Baghdad Friday, saying it was firing at men shooting mortars into a neighboring area.

Iraqi police and witnesses say the American raid on a building in Baghdad’s mostly-Sunni Dora district killed 10 civilians and wounded several others.

The U.S. military estimated two or three people were killed or wounded, but it could not give a precise figure because the bodies were removed before troops arrived at the scene.

Some information for this report was AFP and AP and Reuters.