Insurgents launched a series of apparently coordinated attacks in and around this city north of the Iraqi capital on Monday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 26 others, police and medical officials said. Police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori said the assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks on one checkpoint in the city and two checkpoints just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah. Baqouba is located about 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad. The attacks killed seven soldiers and five police, and wounded 26 others including one civilian caught in the crossfire, said Tariq Ibrahim, a medic at Baqouba's main hospital. A spokesman for the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg, said guerrillas fired a mortar around into the center of Baqouba near the blue-domed governor's office. There were no casualties in that attack, but Goldenberg said Iraqi police came under small arms fire shortly afterward on a highway south of the city. "Coalition forces are responding to the mortar attack," he said. Goldenberg said the car bomb exploded just south of the city.
