A suicide bomber driving a tanker truck struck an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital on Saturday, killing at least 13 soldiers in the deadliest of a series of attacks against Iraqi forces as they try to take over their country's security.
In southern Iraq, an apparent rocket attack at the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention facility killed at least six detainees and wounded 50, the military said. No American casualties were reported.
The U.S. military oversees some 21,000 inmates at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Camp Cropper, near the Baghdad airport. Military officials refuse to give a breakdown of how many prisoners are at each facility but say the majority are at Camp Bucca.
Diplomatic tensions also rose, with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoning the Turkish charge d'affaires and calling for an
immediate halt of cross-border shelling into northern Iraq, saying such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship." The statement was the first government confirmation of the shelling.
Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq and scattered shelling has been reported while its leaders debate whether to stage a major incursion to pursue separatist Kurdish rebels who cross over from bases in Iraq to attack Turkish targets - an operation that could ignite a wider conflict involving Iraqi Kurds and draw in the United States.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, confirmed the meeting between Mahmoud and Turkish charge d'affaires Ahmet Yazal, but denied it was a "protest."
An American soldier was killed Saturday by small-arms fire in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, the military said. The death raised to at least 3,502 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
From The Associated Press
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