Two suicide car bombs exploded outside Iraq’s heavily-guarded Interior Ministry in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 25, many of them policemen, an interior ministry official said.
Police said they were trying to establish how the bombers managed to get through a series of checkpoints in the heavily-manned compound before detonating the explosives, the Reuters news agency reported from Baghdad. The explosions occurred at 8:45 a.m. and 10:05 a.m., Lt. Ahmed Ani of the interior ministry said.
An Army helicopter crashed in bad weather in northern Iraq shortly before midnight Saturday, killing all 12 Americans aboard, military authorities reported Sunday, and five Marines were killed in action in separate incidents over the past two days.
The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was flying between bases with another helicopter when communications were lost, the military said in a statement. A search mission located the wreckage at noon Sunday in a sparsely populated area about seven miles east of the city of Tall Afar, near the Syrian border.
The five Marines were killed in several attacks in central Iraq, the military reported. Three of them were killed by gunfire Sunday morning in separate attacks in the city of Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, the military reported. The two others were killed when their vehicles were hit by roadside bombs Saturday in the towns of Karmah and Ferris, both of which are near Fallujah, the military reported.
Military authorities would not release the names of any of the 17 Americans killed, or provide more details on the circumstances of their deaths, until their relatives could be notified.