A file photo for Iraqis gathering around a car which exploded near a police station in Fallujah

BAQUBA, Iraq, November 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Iraqi civilians and police have taken more deaths early Saturday, November 22, as 18 Iraqis were killed and 30 others injured in two separate blasts north of Baghdad, while the U.S. army confirmed that a civilian plane had to make an emergency landing at Baghdad airport after being hit by a surface-to-air missile.

In Baquba, seven Iraqi police and two civilians were killed when a car bomb hit a police station in this hotspot town, Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Colonel Bill MacDonald, spokesman for the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, which patrols the region, as saying.

A further five Iraqi police were still missing from that attack, MacDonald said.

The horror of the human detritus from the two attacks was so great that doctors said it was difficult to be precise about the toll.

AFP correspondents saw flesh and body parts strewn over the ground at both bomb scenes. Police were forced to fire in the air to disperse anguished residents so they could evacuate the wounded and clear the area.

A large crater was visible just outside the police station. Nearby vehicles were completely destroyed and the police station was severely damaged, an AFP correspondent said.

Separately, a four year-old girl was among six police officers and three civilians killed in this small town 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Baghdad when a bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the police station, according to an "initial" toll from the U.S. military, reported AFP.

The northeastern province of Diyala, where the two towns are located, has long been a hotbed of anti-occupation attacks.

Civilian Plane Hit

Meanwhile, a plane belonging to international express courier DHL made an emergency landing at Baghdad airport Saturday after being hit by a SAM-7 surface-to-air missile over Baghdad and caught fire. 

"The fire was taken out. There are no injuries," said a military official who asked not to be identified.

Witnesses in the nearby Yusifiyeh area asserted that a Russian-made Strella missile was fired at the aircraft and the left wing caught fire, forcing it to make an emergency landing.

DHL, for its part, confirmed that one of its planes was forced to make an emergency landing in Baghdad but declined to confirm the freighter was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

"At approximately 6.30 GMT this morning, a DHL aircraft, an Airbus A300 freighter, departing from Baghdad to Bahrain, had to return to Baghdad and effect an emergency landing," DHL spokeswoman Patricia Thomson said in Brussels.

"This emergency landing was undertaken successfully. I'm delighted to confirm that all on board escaped any injury," she said.

"I can't confirm any other information that is circulating in the media at the moment because we don't have that information."

Asked whether DHL was reviewing its operations in Baghdad, Thomson added: "It would be too early to comment on that at all."

Alcohol Stall Attacked 

An unidentified victim of the grenade attack on the stall selling alcohol

On Friday, November 21, four people were killed, including a child, and 20 others injured in a grenade attack on a stall in south Baghdad selling alcohol on the Muslim day of rest during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, hospital officials said.

"An hour and half ago (8:30 pm - 1730 GMT), someone threw a grenade onto the stall in Bayaa Street and ran off," said Zaher Turki, head of security at the main hospital in the Yarmuk district of the capital.

Turki said there had been threats against several alcohol shops in the area, a mixed neighborhood of Sunni and Shiite Muslims where the influence of Shiite preacher Moqtada Sadr runs high.

He said an 11-year-old boy was among the dead. Policemen at the hospital said two of their colleagues who happened to be nearby were among the wounded.

A shop owner in Bayaa Street, Ahmad Hussein, said warnings from people he described as "Islamists" against alcohol stalls have increased during Ramadan.

The grenade was hurled at a group of six stalls on a sidewalk corner, added Ahmad, who owns an electronic games shop.

"They opened after the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein," in April. "I don't think they will open tomorrow," he said.

Last week, at least 16 others, including children, were slain in a series of explosions separately rocking the western Baghdad town of Ramadi and the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.