BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents launched a series of apparently coordinated attacks on police stations in Sunni Muslim-dominated areas of Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 22 people, including two U.S. soldiers, officials said.
The attacks began at dawn on the police stations in Ramadi and Baqouba. Later, explosions hit police stations in the northern city of Mosul. One of them could have been caused by a suicide bomber, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
The level of coordination in the attacks appeared unusual and could signal the beginning of a push by insurgents to torpedo next week's transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation authority to an interim Iraqi government.
Two American soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the Baqouba fighting, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division said. U.S. tanks opened fire on insurgent positions amid fierce fighting raged in parts of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Insurgents seized a police station there.
U.S. aircraft dropped three 500-pound bombs against an insurgent position near the city soccer stadium, said Maj. Neal E. O'Brien, a U.S. 1st Infantry Division spokesman. Insurgents roamed the city with rocket launchers and automatic weapons.
Explosions and shelling shook Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad. Armed men ran through the streets, witnesses said. Residents said U.S. forces were shelling from positions outside the city, and helicopters were in the skies, but the U.S. military did not immediately be reached for comment.
U.S. forces manning a checkpoint opened fire on local government convoy that included Fallujah's mayor and police chief that was trying to meet the Americans to discuss the violence, said an Iraqi police lieutenant, speaking on condition of anonymity. The convoy turned back, and no casualties were reported.
U.S. forces had launched two airstrikes on Fallujah in recent days against what they said were safehouses of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the beheading for the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, a South Korean whose decapitated body was found Tuesday between Baghdad and Fallujah.
On Tuesday, an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site attributed to al-Zarqawi threatened to assassinate Iraq's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi.
U.S. Marines besieged Fallujah for three weeks in April after four American civilian contractors working for the Blackwater USA security company were ambushed and killed, their bodies mutilated and hung from a Euphrates river bridge.
The city has been relatively calm since Marines announced a deal to end the siege that created the Fallujah Brigade, commanded by officers from Saddam Hussein's army.
Though the Fallujah Brigade patrols the city, hard-line clerics and fighters who held off the Marines are still control the town.
In other attacks on security forces, insurgents wearing black and using masks fired rocket-propelled grenades to attack two police stations in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi 60 miles west of Baghdad, police said.
"We were inside the al-Qataneh police station and suddenly a very heavy explosion happened," said 1st Lt. Ahmed Sami. "We discovered later on that the station was attacked from all around."
He said the station was completely destroyed in the initial blast. Seven people were killed and 13 were wounded, hospital officials said.
Another group attacked the Farook police station in Ramadi, also with rocket propelled grenades, Sami said. In a third assault, insurgents attacked a Ramadi government building, destroying several police cars.
In other attacks on security forces, insurgents raided a police station in Yusufiyah, 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Baghdad on Wednesday, forcing the outgunned police to flee. The militants then blew up the building - the second such attack in recent weeks, said Mohammed Khadum, a police officer.
AP-ES-06-24-04 0351EDT