BAGHDAD, Dec 4: A double suicide car bomb attack claimed 24 lives on Saturday. In the first attack a police station just outside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone was devastated, killing seven people and wounding 57 in the latest strike against Iraq's beleaguered security forces.

Another suicide car bomber destroyed a bus carrying Kurdish militiamen in Mosul, killing 17, and guerillas armed with rocket-propelled grenades also fought street battles with US troops in the northern city for a second day.

Police sources said the Baghdad attack, which shook the city centre early in the morning, also destroyed 35 vehicles, including 17 police cars. It was not clear how many of those killed were policemen.

A thick column of black smoke rose from the site of the blasts, near a main entrance to the Green Zone, home to the interim Iraqi government and several foreign embassies.

The heavy thud of machinegun fire could be heard immediately after the explosions as Iraqi police returned fire.

"I was in the criminal investigation department and saw our guards open the gates for a police patrol," policeman Rafid Khudeir said from his hospital bed, his head swathed in blood- stained bandages. "Then a white car followed them in and blew up outside our building."

One blast was so powerful it blew a car onto the roof of an annexe next to the police station.

The area around the site of the attack, which includes an entrance to the protected Green Zone often used by foreigners and the media, was quickly sealed off by US and Iraqi forces.

Guerillas have repeatedly attacked Iraqi police and police stations in recent days, part of a months-long campaign to destroy the confidence of the fledgling security force.

2 US SOLDIERS KILLED: One US soldier was killed and one wounded on Saturday when a roadside bomb hit their convoy near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, the army said.

Another soldier was killed and five wounded by a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad. Roadside bombs have killed about 30 percent of the US troops to have died in Iraq.

On the Iraq-Jordan border, the military said two soldiers with the multinational force were killed and five wounded in a car bomb attack on Friday.

The attacks raised to at least 991 the number of US troops killed since the invasion was launched last year.

MOSUL ATTACK: Seventeen militiamen from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were killed on Saturday when a suicide car bomber rammed their convoy in Mosul.

"Seventeen peshmergas (volunteers) were killed and 40 more wounded when their convoy was attacked by a car bomb driven by a suicide bomber as they were travelling through the Karama neighbourhood of Mosul," the PUK's chief there, Saad Pira, said.

Mr Pira said the convoy consisted of four minibuses bringing 80 peshmergas to the Arab-majority city of Mosul to replace comrades based there.

"The attack occurred near the PUK headquarters in the Karama neighbourhood," he said. "An Opel car slammed into the convoy and exploded against the minibuses, two of which were totally gutted by fire."

The Arab inhabitants of Mosul are hostile to the Kurdish presence in their city, 375 kilometres north of Baghdad. After the fall of president Saddam Hussein, Kurdish political parties set up offices there, guarded by peshmergas.

Earlier in the morning, explosions rocked parts of the city as guerillas clashed with US forces. Washington says its top foe in Iraq, Al Qaeda ally Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, may have fled to the city after the offensive in Fallujah last month.-Reuters/AFP