Several attacks rocked Iraq Wednesday including a blast near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk which killed 12 Iraqi security personnel trying to defuse a roadside bomb.(Photo: Xinhua/AFP)

(Photo: Xinhua/AFP)

    BAGHDAD, April 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Several attacks rocked Iraq Wednesday including a blast near the northern Iraqi city

(Photo: Xinhua/AFP)

of Kirkuk which killed 12 Iraqi security personnel trying to defuse a roadside bomb.

     Gunmen also attacked a senior official in the Iraqi interior ministry in southern Baghdad Wednesday, wounding him and his driver.

    "Unknown gunmen seriously wounded Col. Naji Musab Hussein and his driver in a drive-by shooting in Dora district in southern Baghdad," an interior ministry source told Xinhua.

    The strike came a day after Iraq's deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Tareq al-Baldawi, escaped injury an attack on his convoy in Baghdad that killed one of his bodyguards.

    In Baghdad, Iraqi police and the US military said three bombs wounded several Iraqis within about two hours Wednesday.

    The first attack happened at 8:40 a.m., when a roadside bomb exploded as a US military convoy passed in eastern Baghdad. News footage showed a fire, billows of thick, dark smoke and a truck totaled by the blast.

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    At about 10:00 a.m. (0700 GMT) a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a US military convoy on the main road leading to the airport, destroying a US Humvee and five civilian cars.

    At 10:45 a.m., a car bomb exploded in the western Baghdad neighborhood of al-Amiriya, wounding three Iraqi civilians.

    In Samarra, the northern Iraqi city, unidentified militants attacked a convoy of police vehicles, wounding three bodyguards of the interior minister, the US military and Iraqi police said.  

    An extremist Islamic group in the name of "al-Qaida of Holy War in Iraq" has claimed the responsibility for the car bombing near Baghdad's airport.

    "A member of our martyrdom seekers' brigade mingled in a US military convoy at the airport road and blew himself up, destroying the infidels," the statement said.

    The attacks came a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Baghdad, praising Iraq for its fledgling democracy and noting improvements in the country's security forces. Enditem