Iraq Explosion Kills Six GIs, One Journalist

BAGHDAD — A roadside explosion outside the Iraqi capital yesterday killed six U.S. soldiers and a civilian journalist, the military said, among 12 U.S. troop deaths reported on a day when two car bombs killed at least 44 Iraqis at a Baghdad market and a police headquarters.

A car bomb in the capital, where American-led forces are in the midst of a crackdown on sectarian violence, killed at least 30 Iraqis. At the police headquarters in Samarra, a volatile city in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb and shooting attack killed 12 police — including the police chief. American soldiers racing to the headquarters to help also came under attack by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades that left two soldiers wounded, the military said.

Dozens of Al Qaeda-linked insurgents also paraded through the streets in Samarra, arriving in about 40 cars, in a show of force against the American-Iraqi efforts to tame the Tigris River city.