Triple attacks in Baghdad killed a Spanish diplomat, a US soldier and at least eight Iraqis yesterday, exactly half a year since the American troops occupied the city.

A suicide car bomber crashed through the gates of a police station, killing at least three policemen and five civilians and wounding scores in the blast, Iraqi police said.

"It was definitely a suicide bomb," one policeman said at the

scene. "We found the head of the attacker. It had been blown off his body. He was bearded, and his body was charred."

In another part of town, Jose Antonio Bernal, a Spanish air force sergeant attached to the embassy, was gunned down after apparently answering the door at his residence. He was described as an information attache in the Iraqi capital.

"The attackers arrived at the home of Bernal in a car bearing foreign licence plates and fired

several times at the attache when he opened the door," a Spanish foreign ministry statement said.

Security has been tightened outside the Spanish embassy in Baghdad.

Near the town of Baquba, about 40 miles northeast from the Iraqi capital, an American soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a military convoy early yesterday, a US military spokeswoman said. She said the soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was pronounced dead in a US military hospital a few hours after the attack at about 2 am.

The US military says 92 US soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq since major combat was declared over on May 1.

Yesterday's attack on a police station in a poor district once known as Saddam City is the bloodiest since the US invasion.

US troops later deployed three dozen US armoured personnel carriers and set up barbed wire fences around the police station and the charred wreckage of the Oldsmobile used in the attack.

The attack happened just as 50 police officers were gathered in the yard to collect their pay.

"The car was very, very fast, and the security guards at the main gate tried to stop the car. They opened fire," said wounded policeman.

Sgt. Saad Drawal al-Dharaji, 29, injured in the leg, said a local Shia imam had threatened the police. "We will have our revenge for this.

The one who did it threatened us first. I don't know his name. He is the imam of Friday prayers at the al-Mohsen mosque," al-Dharaji said.

Incidentally, a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad also pointed his accusing finger at Shia behind the killing of his colleague.

The man dressed all in black as if a Shia imam knocked on the military attache's door between 6:00am and 7:00am, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. Security has been tightened outside the Spanish embassy in Baghdad. Spain strongly supported the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces. There are about 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq, the majority deployed in Shia areas south of Baghdad.

Gomez is Spain's second casualty in post-war Iraq.

On August 19, Manuel Martin Oar, a naval officer seconded to the United Nations, was one of 23 people killed in a bomb attack on the UN headquarters in the Iraqi capital.