A suicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint in western Iraq on Monday, killing at least seven people and injuring nine.
The seven dead men were Iraqi police or national guardsmen standing by the checkpoint in the town of Baghdadi, 160km northwest of the capital.
One report suggested they were waiting to collect their salary when the bomber struck. Police and national guardsmen have been frequent targets of insurgents across Iraq in the past year.
In a separate incident, in north-west Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a United States army convoy, killing two US soldiers and injuring three others.
On Monday night the British Foreign Office tightened its travel warnings for Iraq and said that from Sunday staff at the British embassy in Baghdad were banned from travelling on the main road to the city’s international airport because there had been so many attacks.
The embassy was also advising staff against flying on commercial airliners to or from Iraq after a bomb was defused on a flight last week. – Guardian Unlimited Â