Car bomb kills 6 in Fallujah

Two American patrols were ambushed near Mosul on Monday night.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A car bomb exploded today near a police station in the tense city of Fallujah, killing at least six people, witnesses said. The attack came hours after four American soldiers were wounded in ambushes in northern Iraq.
Violence continued a day after suicide bombers struck the Red Cross headquarters and three police stations in Baghdad, killing about three dozen people and causing foreign organizations to weigh their role in the insurgency-plagued nation.
Monday was the bloodiest day in the Iraqi capital since the end of major combat in the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein six months ago.
Today's bomb in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was placed in a Toyota parked in front of a power station and about 30 yards from a school and 100 yards from a police station, witness Hamid Ali said.
The school was closed, but police said one body was found inside. The identity of the victim was not known. U.S. troops arrived about 20 minutes after the blast and cordoned off the area.
Ambushed patrols
To the north near Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, which has been relatively peaceful, two U.S. patrols were ambushed Monday night.
One soldier was wounded when insurgents attacked his convoy in southeastern Mosul, and three others were wounded, one seriously, when their patrol was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in the town of Tal Afar, just west of Mosul, the U.S. command said.
The brazen and deadly attacks in Baghdad, including a rocket barrage Sunday on a hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, attested to the spike in resistance by opponents of the American occupation.
The attacks also shook the confidence of international organizations that were taking part in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the Red Cross and other nongovernment organizations -- as well as foreign contractors and the United Nations -- to stay in Iraq.
"They are needed. Their work is needed. And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win," Powell said Monday in Washington.
Karbala arrests
Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said today that Bulgarian soldiers in the Iraqi city of Karbala arrested an unspecified number of Iraqis who shot at a Polish helicopter there last week.
The Iraqis fired automatic arms at the helicopter from a roof as it was landing Friday near the Bulgarian base, the ministry said. The 485-man Bulgarian light infantry battalion is patrolling Karbala as part of a 9,000-strong, 22-nation force under Polish command.
Evacuation decision
Antonella Notari, chief spokeswoman at ICRC headquarters in Geneva, said no decision had been made whether to evacuate non-Iraqi staff from Iraq. Twelve of the dead in Monday's attacks were killed in a car-bombing outside the Red Cross office in a quiet street in central Baghdad.
However, the German TV network ARD quoted the head of the ICRC delegation in Iraq as saying the evacuation of Red Cross personnel would begin today.
The three-story Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad was empty the day after the bombing, with staffers being ordered to remain at home. All the windows were broken and large cracks were visible across the building's facade. Workers and residents were cleaning up the debris on the street and trying to drain a pool of water caused by a ruptured water main.
Iraqis unnerved
The attacks Monday occurred at the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and left scenes of broken bodies, twisted wreckage and Iraqis unnerved by an escalating underground war. The dead included eight Iraqi policemen, at least 26 Iraqi civilians and a U.S. soldier.
Iraqi policemen foiled a fourth attack on a precinct in the capital's eastern suburbs by snatching an attacker before he could detonate explosives installed in his car. The man set off a grenade, and shouted "Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators" when he was seized.
It is uncertain what groups carried out the attacks. In Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials blamed foreign fighters intent on targeting those who cooperate with the American-led occupation. The captured would-be bomber was said to carry a Syrian passport.
In Washington, however, Pentagon officials said they believed Saddam loyalists were responsible. President Bush said insurgents had become more "desperate" because of what he said was progress in Iraq.
A coalition spokesman, Charles Heatly, said it is difficult to speculate on who was behind the attacks. He told the British Broadcasting Corp, that "there certainly are indications that there are foreign terrorists who are coming into Iraq," but he did not explicitly accuse them of responsibility.
Foreign terrorists
Britain's special representative in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said today there were signs of foreign terrorist involvement in a string of deadly suicide bombings in Baghdad, and that they could be coming from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world.
"There were suicide attackers in probably all the bomb explosions that went off yesterday in Baghdad, and that is a sign of foreign terrorist tactics, rather than the Saddam loyalist elements that we are still trying to chase down," Greenstock told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
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