At 9:30 a.m., a suicide bomber tried to drive his car onto a US military base in Baggara, 3 miles west of Hawija, but couldn't get past an Iraqi Army checkpoint, Obeidi said. The bomber detonated his car at the checkpoint and killed an Iraqi soldier.
Minutes later, another suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint in Aziziya, on the north side of Hawija, killing two Iraqi soldiers.
The deadliest bombing occurred soon afterward in Dibis, a town 2 miles west of Hawija. Iraqi soldiers grew suspicious of a car in a line of vehicles at the Dibis checkpoint, Obeidi said. When the soldiers approached the car, he said, it exploded, killing 11 Iraqis, including five soldiers, and setting more than 10 cars ablaze.
Jasim Hamad, a hospital physician, said three young children were among the dead.
The US military, meanwhile, reported that five US soldiers had been killed in two days: Two Marines died in separate attacks Monday outside Fallujah; two 42d Infantry Division soldiers died in an attack on their base in Tikrit yesterday; and another soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded yesterday near his vehicle north of Baghdad.
Also, a Sunni Muslim cleric who had been abducted Sunday, Salam Kardici, was found shot to death yesterday in the southern port of Basra, where a Shi'ite Muslim cleric was assassinated last week.
Attacks on Iraqi and foreign security forces have accounted for a large proportion of the more than 850 killings in Iraq since a transitional government led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari took office in late April.
The car bomb in Baghdad early yesterday wounded 28 people, including a policeman, according to a hospital official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Witnesses in the neighborhood of Shula, in northern Baghdad, said the bomb apparently was intended for a convoy of police officers who passed the same spot every morning on their way to set up a security checkpoint nearby.
''We knew it would happen here one day," said Esmail Thamir, 42, who owns a real estate office 15 yards from where the car containing the bomb was parked. ''They shouldn't set up their checkpoints in these places. . . . They shouldn't expose civilians to their danger."
