Iraqi forces foil triple suicide attack

BAGHDAD, Friday (Reuters) Iraqi forces thwarted a triple suicide attack on Baghdad's Green Zone government compound on Thursday, killing two bombers before they reached a checkpoint and capturing one alive, U.S. military spokesmen said.

Iraqi forces guarding the checkpoint spotted what they identified as a suicide bomber driving towards them during the morning rush hour, Brigadier General Donald Alston said. They opened fire, and the bomb went off before reaching them.

Two other bombers, strapped with explosives, then ran toward them. One was shot and killed as his vest detonated when he fell. That blast wounded the third bomber, the U.S. military said in a later statement. As Iraqi soldiers began to treat him and four other wounded Iraqis they noticed his explosives.

"That bomber was then shot by the IPs (Iraqi police)," the statement said. After an Iraqi bomb disposal expert defused the charges, the third man was taken, paralysed and in critical condition, to hospital, it added.

Doctors at the city's Yarmouk hospital said they had seen two bodies and five wounded, apparently including the captured bomber. He was being treated in the custody of Iraqi police, but U.S. officers expected to interview him, Alston told reporters.

The attack "failed in every way because of discipline and courage under fire of the Iraqi security forces", he added.

The vast Green Zone, comprising former palaces, hotels and government buildings along the bank of the Tigris River, is completely surrounded by towering concrete blast walls that often cut through entire neighbourhoods. It houses both the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government and its American backers.

U.S. forces also announced the capture of a man they described as a senior lieutenant of Iraq's al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the second person described as a key aide to the Jordanian militant whose capture they announced this week.

They said Abu Seba, caught in Ramadi on July 9, had played a role in the kidnapping and killing of Egypt's envoy to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, snatched from the street on July 2.

Catching Thursday's wounded suicide bomber is also a rare intelligence opportunity since few are caught alive.