Five GIs, 22 Iraqis Killed in Attacks

BAGHDAD — At least 22 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier were killed in a string of attacks in Iraq, and military officials announced that four American soldiers had been killed by a bomb Thursday in Tall Afar, near the Syrian border.This morning, insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades ambushed a police checkpoint in the capital, killing five policemen and wounding one.

A pickup truck stopped near the checkpoint and insurgents jumped out and began firing, joined by other gunmen who had been hiding behind nearby trees, said police Lt. Col. Sabah Hamid Fartosi.

At least five car bombs rocked Baghdad on Saturday, U.S. military spokesman Greg Kaufman said. Iraqi police officials put the toll from those explosions at seven, and said two Iraqis, a policeman and a former Baath party official, were shot to death.

Six bombs exploded in the northern city of Mosul, killing five Iraqis, officials said. Twelve Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers were reported wounded.

West of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, three civilians were killed and at least one wounded when rockets and mortars slammed into Fallouja. A young girl was among those killed; an Associated Press Television footage showed a weeping man kissing the child at Fallouja General Hospital.

Saturday, an American soldier was fatally shot in Khaldiya, 75 miles west of the capital, officials said. About 1,580 U.S. military personnel have died since the war began March 2003.

Meanwhile, at a meeting in Turkey, Iraq’s neighboring countries pledged to boost border security and increase intelligence-sharing with the new government in Baghdad, steps that could stem the flow of insurgents across the poorly patrolled frontiers.