Baghdad, May 13
A suicide truck bomber crashed into offices of a Kurdish political party today, killing at least 45 persons and wounding scores, including a mayor, officials said. It was the second suicide attack in Kurdish areas of the north in four days.

A parked car bomb also exploded near a market in central Baghdad today, killing at least 17 Iraqis, wounding 46 and damaging shops, the police said.

Meanwhile, an al-Qaida front group today said it had captured several US soldiers in the attack a day earlier south of Baghdad that killed five and left three missing.

The USA said 4,000 troops were searching the farming area south of the capital for any sign of the three missing American soldiers.

In a statement posted on a website, the Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack in Mahmoudiya yesterday and said it held an unspecified number of US soldiers. The group offered no proof to back up its claim but promised more details later.

The morning suicide truck bomb attack in Makhmur, 50 km south of Irbil, badly damaged the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Makhmur is just south of the autonomous Kurdish-controlled areas, but it has a substantial Kurdish population.

The blast also killed the police chief and damaged the mayor’s office, the officials said.

Ziryan Othman, health minister of the Kurdish regional government, said at least 45 persons were killed and 11 were wounded, including mayor Abdul Rahman Delaf, who also is a prominent Kurdish writer and the director of the KDP office. — AP