A truck bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy compound in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 11 people, wounding 65 and strewing gutted cars, body parts and a severed head across the street outside.
Elsewhere in the capital, US troops exchanged fire with gunmen in nearby buildings after a blast set a Humvee vehicle ablaze. At least one
Iraqi bystander was killed as US soldiers sprayed the area with gunfire. His body lay spread-eagled on the road, blood oozing from his head onto the baking-hot tarmac.
A US army spokesman said there had been an improvised bomb attack in the area but had no information on casualties.
The army said that in an earlier gunbattle in central Baghdad on Wednesday night, guerrillas killed two American soldiers and wounded
another, along with an Iraqi interpreter.
The deaths brought to 55 the number of US troops killed in hostile action since May 1.
Yesterday's embassy blast came a week after Jordan granted asylum to Saddam Hussein's elder daughters Raghd and Rana, angering some Iraqis. Iraqis who support Saddam
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are also irate with Amman for cooperating with Washington during the war.
Islamist militants have scores to settle with Jordanian security services helping their Western and Saudi counterparts pursue Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and other groups.
No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion.
Iraqi police Captain Ahmad Suleiman said five policemen guarding the compound were among the dead. Hospital officials said 11 people were killed and some 65 wounded.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, US commander in Iraq, said that in terms of casualties it was the worst attack on a non-military target since the end of major combat.
"This shows that we have some professional terrorists who are operating in this country and that we're still in a combat zone," he told a news conference.
SADDAM 'ON THE RUN'
In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division said raids over the
past day had caught four targeted high-level suspects including a leader of Saddam's Fedayeen militia, captured in Tikrit, and two associates of Saddam's son Uday seizedin Kirkuk.
Uday was killed along with his younger brother Qusay last month in a US raid on their hideout in the city of Mosul.
Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the US 4th Infantry Division which has mounted multiple raids around Tikrit to hunt for Saddam and his top lieutenants, said the fugitive dictator was keeping on the move to evade capture.
"He's on the run. He's moving every three to four hours," Odierno told a news conference at his headquarters in one of the grand marble halls of Saddam's main palace in Tikrit.
"Every day we get four or five reports that he could be anywhere from Kirkuk to Baquba to Tikrit."
Citing intelligence data, Odierno said: "He is clearly moving three to four times every single day... On some of the raids we've done there are indications that somebody's been moving through there. And somebody extremelyimportant."
Asked how Saddam was eluding
capture, he said: "My guess is he's in disguise some way, he's moving around in unassuming clothes and vehicles."
NIGHT RAID
The suspected Fedayeen leader captured in Tikrit was tracked down overnight after 39 men were turned out of a workers' hostel, handcuffed and questioned by soldiers.
Raid commander Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell said the man may have been a "national-level Fedayeen leader," funding and arming attacks on US troops beyond Tikrit itself.
As Abrams tanks and armored vehicles sealed the area and helicopters clattered overhead in the dark, troops charged up stairways, banging on doors. They made men kneel in the street, heads down and hands cuffed behind their backs with plastic ties. Interpreters handled the flow of questions.
The targeted suspect was taken away blindfolded and the 38 others held at the city hostel were released.