At least 40 die in Iraq violence
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Fighting and a suicide bombing killed at least 40 people across Iraq in weekend violence.
Kirkuk's police chief Sunday revised the death toll in a car bomb attack down to 15, instead of the 25 killed as initially reported Saturday.
The dead include three civilians, students and members of the Kirkuk police academy, Gen. Torhan Yousif said.
Thirty-six others were wounded Saturday when an explosives-laden car -- driven by a suicide bomber -- detonated next to the police academy the northern Iraqi city, Iraqi National Guard officials told CNN.
The explosives-laden car rammed the security barricades of the academy as police and civilians were leaving the facility, officials said.
A second bomb nearby was remotely detonated at the same time the car bomb exploded. The car bomb did not reach the actual grounds of the academy.
"This is a terrorist act against members of Iraqi police who were heading to their homes," The Associated Press quoted Kirkuk police Col. Sarhat Qadir as saying.
In the town of Latifia, 16 police officers were killed and 20 wounded in fighting between insurgents and Iraqi security forces, an unnamed police official told CNN.
Police and national guard forces were conducting raids in Latifia, located about 45 kilometers south of Baghdad, when the fighting broke out. Marines assisted in the raid.
Elsewhere, a U.S. helicopter made a controlled landing near Tal Afar, near Mosul, after it was fired upon. The engine compartment caught fire and two crew members were injured.
While a Stryker vehicle secured the site of the downed chopper, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and disabled the vehicle, the military said.
In the battle that ensured, U.S. forces forces killed two insurgents. The forces also called in air support and dropped a bomb near the city.
The number of Iraqi casualties varied. Local hospitals report 9 dead and 50 wounded, the military said. But an official from Tal Afar general hospital said 12 Iraqis were killed and 60 wounded -- 20 critically -- as a result of the airstrike.
Violence elsewhere on Saturday included an oil pipeline attack just north of Basra, which caused "huge fires," according to a police official in the southern Iraqi city.
Firefighters from the oil company and the Basra civil defense forces are battling the blaze.
The attack happened in Hartha, about 16 miles north of Basra. The pipeline runs from just north of Basra, south to the al-Faw peninsula.
Also, another report of a hostage taking surfaced on Saturday when Arabic-language news channel Al-Arabiya aired a tape showing a Turkish man who had been taken hostage. He's a driver for a Turkish company.
The kidnappers call themselves the Islamic Resistance Brigades. The hostage-takers threaten to behead him in two days unless the company stops working with U.S. forces in Iraq. CNN cannot confirm the incident.
Al-Jazeera, another major Arabic-language TV network known for its reporting of hostage seizures, remains under a government ban.
Iraq's interim government Saturday extended its ban on the network's operations in Iraq indefinitely.
CNN Producers Mohammed Tawfeeq and Mike Mount contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
