At least four Iraqi police were killed and 19 mostly soldiers were wounded when gunmen attacked a police station and rammed a truck bomb into a barracks entrance in Baquba on Sunday, police said. The double attack provoked a gunfight between insurgents and Iraqi forces in the town north-east of Baghdad in which at least four of the attackers were killed, said a police source. Gunmen attacked the Abbara station on the northern side of the restive city with small arms at about 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) as a suicide truck bomber blew up his truck at the entrance to an army barracks about a kilometre (mile) away.
The police source said there were 14 soldiers and three civilians among the wounded.
Attacks against Iraq's budding security forces are frequent in Baquba, home to a mixture of Sunnis and Shiites.
The director of the police anti-corruption department in the Iraqi city of Mosul was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Sunday, and gunmen later opened fire on his funeral procession, killing two mourners.
The US military said the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in the building where Brigadier Walid Kashmoula worked. Both were killed and one person was wounded.
Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it had assassinated "the apostate Walid Kashmoula who is the top American agent" in the area.
"This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists," al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.
In the afternoon, insurgents fired on Kashmoula's funeral procession, killing two people and wounding at least 14, some seriously, hospital officials said.
Dozens of cars were in the procession in western Mosul, following the vehicle carrying his body to the grave.
Insurgents in Iraq have repeatedly attacked leading police and army officials. Iraqi police and soldiers are also frequent targets of attack by gunmen and suicide bombers.
On Saturday, a roadside bomb killed four policemen in Kirkuk during a funeral for a colleague killed a day earlier.
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