Militants kill 17 security forces across Iraq, including 10 in a Baghdad neighborhood

Militants kill 17 security forces across Iraq

BAGHDAD — Militants killed 17 members of Iraq’s security forces Thursday in a combination of shootings and roadside bombs that was a bitter demonstration of the dangers Iraqi forces still face.

The worst attack came in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah when 10 members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in what appeared to have been coordinated killings by militants in a bold, daylight attack in the neighborhood that was once an insurgent stronghold, Iraqi police and army officials said.

Militants first opened fire at an Azamiyah checkpoint and minutes later detonated three roadside bombs, the officials said. A large patch of blood could be seen on the ground near an Iraqi army truck. Authorities immediately closed down the area.

Fifteen people were also wounded in the Azamiyah attack, which appeared concentrated in one street in the Sunni neighborhood.

The Azamiyah attack came in what was already a deadly day for Iraq’s security forces.

More than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, insurgents are increasingly targeting Iraqi security forces, as all but 50,000 U.S. troops prepare to leave the country by the end of August.

As part of a security agreement between the United States and Iraq, all American troops must leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Earlier Thursday, a suicide bomber drove a minibus into the main gate of an Iraqi army base near Saddam Hussein’s hometown, killing four soldiers and wounding 10, said police and hospital officials.

In the western city of Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, two roadside bombs targeting Iraqi army patrols killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded eight others, police and hospital officials in the city said.

In the northern city of Mosul, a bomb attached to a police vehicle killed one policeman and injured two others, a police official in the city said.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.