Gunmen killed three policemen and wounded a fourth today at a funeral procession in the northern city of Mosul.
The attack occurred as police were taking part in a procession for a colleague's wife and two children who died in a roadside bomb attack in Mosul a day earlier, said policeman Ammar Hussein.
Insurgents led by Sunni Arabs, a minority that was dominant under Saddam Hussein are targeting Shiite funeral processions and ceremonies in an apparent campaign to spark a sectarian war. Last month, suicide bombers attacked Shiite mosques during the commemoration of Ashoura, killing nearly 100 people.
Yesterday, relatives gathered in small groups to bury 50 people killed a day earlier by a suicide bomber in Mosul on Thursday, after canceling a mass funeral procession for fear of another attack.
Meanwhilwle Ukraine withdrew 150 servicemen from Iraq, starting a gradual pullout that officials have said will be completed by October.
The Ukrainian company that was based near Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, left Iraq and was expected to return home by Tuesday, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said.
Earlier this month, President Viktor Yushchenko and top defence officials ordered a phased withdrawal of Ukraine's 1,650-strong contingent from the US-led coalition in Iraq.
Ukraine has lost 17 soldiers in Iraq, and the deployment is deeply unpopular among people in the former Soviet republic.
Ukraine plans to pull about 590 more of its soldiers out of Iraq by May and the rest by October, the Defense Ministry said. Yushchenko said March 1 that the pullout would be completed by Oct. 15, but Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko later said Ukraine might leave some troops in Iraq two months beyond that deadline.
Bulgarian military investigators, meanwhile, said that US troops who killed a Bulgarian soldier had opened fire without warning but did not did not "deliberately" kill Pvt. Gardi Gardev on March 4.
The shooting occurred on the same day US forces killed an Italian intelligence agent and wounded a journalist who had just spent a month as the hostage of insurgents, straining relations two of the Bush administration's rare European partners in Iraq.
"Although the US soldiers guarding a communication site have not acted deliberately, they have failed to identify the objects and opened fire without firing warning shots," the Bulgarian Defence Ministry investigators said in a statement.
Bulgaria has a 460-member infantry battalion serving under Polish command in southern Iraq and the liberal government of Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski has said it wants to keep the troops there.
AP