BAGHDAD — Gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police checkpoint in northern Iraq before dawn Wednesday, killing six officers in a sophisticated attack on fledgling Iraqi security installations, police said.

Militants packed into four cars screeched up to the checkpoint south of Mosul at around 1:30 a.m., attacking it from both sides, said police Brig. Abdel-Karim al-Jubouri. Clashes lasted about 15 minutes, after which all the gunmen escaped, al-Jubouri said.

Six policemen were killed and the other four at the checkpoint were wounded — all men from the area, he said. Al-Jubouri said it is believed that the assailants — suspected members of the al-Qaida front group the Islamic State of Iraq — sustained some casualties but nobody was left behind.

The attack occurred in the Gayara area south of Mosul, a mostly Sunni Muslim city that includes many ethnic Kurds, located about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The area has seen an increase in violence since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched offensives earlier this year to oust Sunni militants from the Iraqi capital and its surrounding belts. Some al-Qaida-linked insurgents are believed to have fled north, digging into positions in the Sunni-dominated Mosul area.

At least two prison breaks earlier this year also emptied hundreds of suspected insurgents into the streets there.

The Sunni insurgency also has been strong in the volatile Diyala province east of Baghdad, where four civilians were killed and four others injured Wednesday.

In Diyala's al Salam area, gunmen opened fire on a car at 9 a.m., killing two and wounding two others. An hour later in another area, assailants shot into a crowd in central Muqdadiyah, killing two and wounding two, police said.

Other scattered violence left at least five other Iraqis dead, police said, including a civilian killed by a roadside bomb on Palestine Street, a popular shopping district in the Iraqi capital. The bomb targeted a passing convoy of sport-utility vehicles, and left five other people wounded, police said.

The attacks came less than a day after insurgents fired rockets or mortars at the sprawling garrison that houses the headquarters of American forces in Iraq, killing one person and wounding 11 coalition soldiers, the U.S. command said.

The command said the person killed was a "third-country national," meaning someone who is not an American or an Iraqi. Most troops stationed at Camp Victory are American, but other coalition soldiers are based at the complex near Baghdad International Airport and workers from other countries are also there.

The violence occurred after two days of congressional testimony by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top commander Gen. David Petraeus, on the situation in Iraq since President Bush's decision to send 30,000 reinforcements to stem sectarian violence.

National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, reading from a government statement, said the Iraqis believed "in the near future" the need for U.S. and other coalition forces "will decrease."

Still, he suggested Iraqi forces may be strong enough by the end of next year to support even more reductions in U.S. troops than General Petraeus outlined to Congress.

"We are not far from truth, maybe, if we say that multinational forces numbers could reach by the end of next year less than 100,000," al-Rubaie told reporters.

Speaking to reporters, al-Rubaie acknowledged disappointment by some U.S. lawmakers at what they saw as the slow pace of progress in Iraq.

"Some of us get tired by the process, either because of the lack of achievement or the personal interests that the many sides have," he said.




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