The death toll from Sunday morning's suicide fuel tanker bomb explosion near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahudin province rose to four, a provincial police source said.
"The latest reports said that four soldiers were killed and 15 others were wounded in the attack," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Iraqi soldiers at the checkpoint on the main road near the town of Balad, 80 km north of Baghdad, opened fire on the suicide bomber who was driving an explosives-rigged fuel tanker toward their position, but the attacker still managed to detonated the tanker before reaching the checkpoint, the source said.
The death toll suffered by the Iraqi army was reported following an earlier report by the police source that only three soldiers were wounded in the incident.
Elsewhere in the province, some 40 gunmen in 10 vehicles stormed a police station in the village of Hajaj near the town of Beiji, 200 km north of Baghdad, in the morning and killed seven policemen and wounded two others, the police said.
The attackers also blew up the building of the police station before they fled the scene, they said.
According to the police, the villagers took their arms and chased the attackers along with a police force, detaining undetermined number of the attackers.
Salahudin province is a stronghold for Sunni insurgents, which has long been the hotbed of insurgency against the U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces since the outbreak of Iraq war in 2003.
