Suicide bomber attacks Slovak embassy in Baghdad

A suicide bomber in a pick-up truck blew himself up outside the Slovak embassy in Baghdad yesterday, wounding four people, police said.

A police official said Iraqi civilians and guards were wounded.

"The suicide bomber was headed towards the embassy but he blew up at a checkpoint next to the building," the police official said.

Some embassy staff were in the building at the time but no one was hurt, a Slovak foreign ministry spokesman said in Bratislava.

Little remained of the truck but damage to the embassy was mostly limited to the concrete blast walls set up around the compound, similar to those at most public buildings in Baghdad.

The foreign ministry could not say whether the attack was directed specifically against Slovakia, he added. Slovakia, an ex-communist state which joined the European Union last year, has been a staunch supporter of the US-led military campaign in Iraq. It has had 107 army engineers and security personnel in Iraq since July 2003.