BAGHDAD: At least 28 people were killed and 25 wounded in an apparent suicide bomb attack on Iraq's Interior Ministry yesterday as the country marked National Police Day, police said.

Police said they believed two suicide bombers detonated explosives outside the building in eastern Baghdad. They were trying to establish how one of the bombers had managed to get through a series of checkpoints in the heavily guarded compound.

Al-Qaida in Iraq later claimed responsibility for the attack.

A ceremony celebrating the 84th anniversary of the formation of the Iraqi police force was taking place at the police academy next door to the ministry at the time of the blast.

Among the dignitaries attending were US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, and the Iraqi defence and interior ministers.

US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, who was at the ceremony, denied an Iraqi state television report that a mortar bomb had hit the parade ground.

"The blast could be heard in the distance, but no mortar hit the parade ground," he said.

The ministry has been attacked by insurgents on several previous occasions, especially by Sunni Arab insurgents who accuse it of running Shi'ite militia who oppress the minority Sunni Arab community. The ministry denies such charges.

In November, US troops found a bunker run by the Interior Ministry containing 170 prisoners, mostly Sunni Arabs. Many showed signs of abuse and torture.

Crash kills 8 US troops, 4 civilians

Eight US troops and four American civilians died aboard a US Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in northern Iraq, the military said yesterday.

The helicopter, which crashed just before midnight on Saturday, was found on Sunday. The military initially said only that there were eight passengers and four crew aboard, all believed to be American. The military yesterday specified that four passengers were civilians.

In other violence yesterday, gunmen assassinated an investigative judge in Kirkuk. Meanwhile, five bodies, bound and blindfolded, were found shot to death in Baghdad late Sunday night, police said.

There were reports yesterday that the French engineer who was freed from captivity on Sunday escaped out of a farmhouse window and ran to coalition troops, contradicting an account given by Iraqi police that he was thrown out of a car approaching a checkpoint.

Source: China Daily