At least nine people were killed when a huge truck bomb ripped through the car parking area of a Baghdad police station on Monday, forcing a newly sovereign Iraq to confront yet another grisly scene of carnage.
The attack capped a week of at least seven car bombings that have left scores of people dead and injured and thrown up a serious challenge to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government, which took power just three weeks ago.
Burnt flesh mixed with mangled chunks of metal around a large crater carved out by the force of the suspected suicide bombing outside the police station in Baghdad's southern Saydia neighbourhood.
Scores of police cars and vans, the proud symbol of Iraq's fledgling security forces, lay in ruins, some ripped apart, others badly dented and most with their windscreens smashed.
"A truck, with someone behind the wheel, sped into the parking lot and exploded," said policeman Haitham Salman.
The blast occurred at about 8:20 am (0420 GMT) in between the police station parking lot and a public garage with petrol pumps and a car wash. It also damaged other property over about a one-kilometre radius.
Moments afterwards, a group of about 30 people, including two women and about a dozen boys, struck up a chant in support of ex-dictator Saddam Hussein, before they were silenced by Iraqi national guardsmen firing into the air.
"The toll is nine dead and 62 injured, 25 of them are in a serious but stable condition," said Doctor Hashem Jabbar, who works in a central department at the health ministry that collects tolls from Iraqi hospitals. At least one of the dead was said to be a policeman.
Just 10 minutes after the bombing, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a fire station near the heavily-fortified compound that houses much of the US-led foreign presence in Baghdad, wounding one person, a US military spokesman said.
Meanwhile, a senior official at Iraq's defence ministry has been shot dead in Baghdad, a spokesman said on Monday, in the latest attack against the new administration three weeks after the transfer of sovereignty.
"One of the director generals in the Ministry of Defence, Issam Jassem Kadhem, was assassinated on Sunday at 10 pm (18H00 GMT) by unknown attackers," ministry spokesman Radhi Badr told AFP.
Furthermore in Basra, the British military said one of its helicopters crashed in on Monday killing one soldier and injuring two others but the cause of the incident was unknown.
"A helicopter crashed inside the airstrip in Basra ... There was one dead and two wounded," said Major David Steel, adding that the incident took place at 10:40 am (0640 GMT).
A spokeswoman on the British base in Basra, Iraq's second city, said the two injured soldiers were being treated for their wounds but she was unable to give further information on their condition.
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