BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Attackers detonated a car bomb near police and government buildings in the western city of Haditha on Thursday, killing 10 Iraqis. A decapitated body in an orange jumpsuit was found in the Tigris River in northern Iraq, the military said.

The body, discovered Wednesday night, had not been identified, but there were suspicions it could be that of a Bulgarian driver taken hostage recently by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terrorist group and slain.

Elsewhere, gunmen fired at cars belonging to Iraq’s foreign minister, killing one official and wounding two, an Iraqi national guard official said. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was not in the two-car convoy during the attack 65 miles south of the northern city of Kirkuk.

Police apparently thwarted an attack in the southern city of Karbala, chasing a car after receiving a tip it was filled with explosives. Two militants inside detonated their bomb, killing themselves but causing no other casualties.

An Islamic Web site carried a statement purportedly from al-Zarqawi’s group claiming responsibility for Wednesday’s assassination of a provincial Iraqi governor it called a “renegade traitor.”

The violence was the latest in a series of deadly attacks by insurgents since the U.S.-led coalition handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. Sixty-five people have been killed since the June 28 handover, including 14 in a July 6 car bombing in Khalis.

On Wednesday, a suicide car bombing in Baghdad killed at least 10 people near Iraqi government headquarters, and insurgents assassinated a provincial governor in an ambush.

The attack in Haditha, known as a stronghold of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime, hit a government complex housing police, civil defense and municipal offices. The blast wounded 40 people, Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdel-Rahman said.

Police and government officials have been targeted repeatedly by insurgents, who view them as puppets of U.S. forces.

Insurgents detonated a huge car bomb Wednesday at a checkpoint just outside the so-called Green Zone, former home to the U.S. coalition authority and current site of Iraq’s interim government and the U.S. and British embassies. The blast killed 10 Iraqis, many waiting in line to apply for government jobs, the Health Ministry said. The U.S. military said 11 were killed.

Hours later, insurgents tossed hand grenades and fired machine guns at a convoy transporting Nineveh Gov. Osama Youssef Kashmoula, killing him and two guards. Four attackers also were killed in the ambush north of Baghdad.

A statement posted on an Islamic Web site known for carrying extremist content said al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad movement killed Kashmoula.

“With God’s grace, your brothers in the military wing of the Tawhid and Jihad group have chopped the head of the renegade traitor, the governor of Mosul, through a well-set trap,” it said.

The statement’s authenticity could not immediately be verified.

The decapitated body was discovered by Iraqi police northwest of Beiji, 170 miles north of Baghdad. Police turned the body over to the U.S. military for identification, and the Bulgarian government said fingerprints were sent to Bulgaria for possible identification.

U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il were wearing orange garments in videos showing their deaths. Their bodies were found earlier.

Militant groups in Iraq have taken several foreign contractors hostage, threatening to kill them if their governments did not pull their troops out or accede to other demands.

Al-Zarqawi’s group said Wednesday it killed a Bulgarian hostage. Video broadcast on Al-Jazeera showed one of two Bulgarian hostages, later identified as Georgi Lazov, kneeling before three masked men.

Lazov was not wearing an orange jumpsuit in the footage shown, but the station declined to broadcast the rest of the video, which it said showed him being killed. His body had not been recovered.

The militants also threatened to kill a second Bulgarian hostage if the United States did not release Iraqi detainees.

On Thursday, the Iraqi kidnappers of an Egyptian truck driver gave his Saudi employers 48 hours to leave Iraq or the hostage would be executed, according to the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.

An Al-Jazeera editor, who declined to be identified, told The Associated Press the station received a written statement from the Iraqi Legitimate Resistance group giving Al-Jarie Transport the deadline.

The group claims it kidnapped Alsayeid Mohammed Alsayeid Algarabawi, 42, last week from a fuel truck he was driving from Saudi Arabia to the U.S. military in Iraq.

Faisal al-Naheet, whose company is a subcontractor for Al-Jarie Transport, told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday that Al-Jarie would stop its work in Iraq to save the hostage’s life.

Al-Naheet said the kidnappers also demanded a $1 million ransom but the company would not pay.

Elsewhere in Iraq:

– Saboteurs blasted a crude oil pipeline feeding into a main artery in northern Iraq, halting exports to Turkey and directing another blow to the country’s key industry.

– A rocket hit a home in Kirkuk, killing four people and wounding three, police and hospital officials said. A second rocket struck a home in a former army base used by Kurdish refugees, wounding four people.

– Hundreds rallied in central Baghdad, demanding the death penalty for Saddam, who currently is in custody awaiting trial. The largely Shiite crowd came from Baghdad’s Sadr City section and the southern city of Babel, where mass graves are said to have been discovered, to demand compensation for relatives killed during Saddam’s rule.

AP-ES-07-15-04 2048EDT

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