Bomber Kills Police Chief and 2 Others in Baghdad

BAGHDAD —  A suicide bomber struck a joint Iraqi-U.S. checkpoint at 6 a.m. today in a southern Baghdad neighborhood, killing at least three Iraqi policemen and wounding one.

One of the dead was Aladeen Arif, police chief for the nearby Yarmouk neighborhood, police officers at the scene said.

The suicide bomber also died, said 1st Lt. Hassan Jassim, an Iraqi policeman at the scene.

U.S. soldiers, who were in a Humvee, were unharmed, he said.

The Amariya neighborhood is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and many people from the restive cities west of Baghdad, including Fallouja and Abu Ghraib, where the anti-U.S. insurgency has been intense, have taken refuge there.

Early today, explosions shook central Baghdad for more than four hours as U.S. troops in tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles battled gunmen, and mortar rounds struck the Green Zone, where the U.S. military and diplomatic corps are based.

At midmorning, a U.S. tank was still burning on Haifa Street and the thoroughfare was half-obscured by black smoke. Graffiti was scrawled on surrounding buildings, espousing the slogans of Jamaat al Tawhid wal Jihad, a group believed to be associated with alleged terrorist mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The Haifa Street neighborhood, home to a number of Syrian and Palestinian immigrants, has witnessed frequent battles and attacks on U.S. convoys in the last several months.

The attacks on the Green Zone began around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, when rockets and mortar shells landed in the area. Rockets could be seen over the Tigris River, which borders the Green Zone.