Seven killed in suicide truck bombing

Five US troops were killed in the deadliest attack on US forces in Iraq in more than a year when a suicide truck bomber targeted a police compound in Mosul. Two Iraqi police and an Iraqi soldier also perished in the blast.Five US troops were killed on Friday in the deadliest attack on American forces in Iraq for more than a year when a suicide truck bomber struck a police compound in the northern city of Mosul.  Two Iraqi police and an Iraqi soldier also perished in the blast, according to an interior ministry official. The US military considers Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, to be the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.The attack comes amid a sudden upturn in bombings nationwide including a series of blasts in Baghdad that have dealt a blow to recent upbeat assessments by American commanders about Iraq's fragile security.A US military spokesman said that five soldiers were killed and two others wounded in the attack, adding that the patrol seemed to have been in the area by chance and was not deliberately targetted."It appears to have been a target of opportunity as the ... convoy was passing the national police station, and not at the headquarters conducting training," spokesman Major Derrick Cheng told AFP.An Iraqi policeman who asked not to be named described how the truck barrelled through a checkpoint before it exploded in the heart of the compound, leaving a huge crater and damaging surrounding buildings.A Mosul police official said 70 people were wounded, including 43 members of the security forces and 27 civilians.