SAMARRA, Iraq, March 7, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least 27 people, including several Iraqi servicemen, were killed Monday, March 7, in a string of attacks against the country's security forces, police said.

The deadliest attack was in Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad, where at least 15 people, including two soldiers, were killed when a bomber blew up his vehicle at the house of an Iraqi army officer, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

A US military spokesman in the area south of the restive city of Samarra confirmed the attack but gave a toll of two killed and nine wounded.

Since Saturday, commandos from Iraq's interior ministry and US troops have closed off entrances to Samarra and launched raids in the city.

In Baquba, 60 kilometres northeast of the capital, five soldiers were killed when gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Al-Muradiyah area with rocket propelled grenades and assault rifles, said a US military statement.

Separately, two policemen and two civilians were killed when a booby-trapped car parked on a street in Baquba's Al-Mualimeen neighborhood exploded as an Iraqi police patrol passed, police said.

Another 11 people were wounded including six policemen, medics said.

The policemen had been on their way to help the soldiers attacked at the checkpoint when the car bomb exploded, police said.

Two roadside bombs killed three soldiers and at least one mortar round landed in the town, reported Reuters quoting police sources.

In another development, US occupation forces raided farmland in Baghdad's southern edge on Monday, arresting up to 52 people, including 39 women and children, for questioning.

About 500 US soldiers in combat vehicles swooped before dawn on a seven-kilometer stretch of farmland in the Doura district in search of suspects involved in deadly attacks on US troops, said an AFP correspondent accompanying the military.

One platoon raided a cement farmhouse nestled between orange groves and held up to 52 people, including 39 women and children, for interrogation.

A bomb attack less than a kilometer from the house on February 26 killed a several soldiers, said US Captain Doug Hoyt.

Further south in Al-Musayab in Babil province, US marines and Iraqi forces raided the Al-Mutaqeen mosque.

They arrested several people allegedly suspected of “using the mosque as a staging area for conducting improvised-explosive device attacks against Iraqi and US forces,” said a US military statement.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said Monday that a Bulgarian soldier killed on Friday in Iraq was the victim of “friendly fire” from a US soldier.

The minister confirmed an anonymous claim posted on a Bulgarian army Web site earlier on Monday, which said the soldier had been killed by US military fire.

“Someone started shooting at our patrol from the west, and in the same direction, 150 meters away, there was a unit from the US army,” the minister told a press conference.

Gardi Gardev was the eighth Bulgarian to be killed while serving in Iraq, where the NATO member has 450 troops serving under Polish command.

Freed Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena, shot and wounded after being freed in Iraq, accused Sunday, March 6, trigger-happy US soldiers of deliberately targeting her because Washington opposed Italy's policy of dealing with kidnappers.