BAGHDAD -- Mortar shells slammed into an Interior Ministry prison on Monday, killing at least seven inmates and wounding 23, police and a hospital official said. One of Iraq's main refineries came under fire in a separate attack in the capital - the latest strike against an oil industry vital to the country's economic recovery.
The mortar rounds hit a prison made up of several cell blocks, each containing prisoners accused of terrorism-related crimes or civil offenses, police said.
Police said American troops sealed off the area and were investigating the bombardment, which took place about 6:30 a.m. The U.S. military said it had no immediate information, and Iraqi Interior Ministry officials could not be reached for comment.
A hospital official said the inmates were sleeping when the mortars hit, one landing directly on a cell and two others nearby. Casualties were sent to a hospital inside the Interior Ministry compound for treatment, the official said.
In Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, a rocket or a mortar shell hit an oil refinery, police and an Oil Ministry spokesman said. The U.S. military confirmed an attack in the area.
Assim Jihad, a spokesman for Iraq's Oil Ministry, said a rocket or mortar shell landed on a storage tank around 6 a.m. He said no casualties were reported and the plant was still operating.
"The fire is under control and within a few hours it will be extinguished. This will not affect production," Assim told The Associated Press. A police official said the fire was caused by a 120 mm mortar round.
The police and hospital officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the attacks.
Iraq's oil industry has come under repeated attack since the war began, including on Friday when a bomb exploded beneath a key pipeline outside the northern city of Beiji, home to the country's largest refinery.
According to Oil Ministry figures from July, the industry suffered 159 attacks in 2006 by insurgents and saboteurs, killing and wounding dozens of employees and reducing exports by some 400,000 barrels a day. Such attacks have cost Iraq billions of dollars since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Violence has declined sharply in Iraq since June, when the influx of American troops to the capital and its surrounding areas began to gain momentum. Baghdad has seen some of the most dramatic improvements. Mortar attacks and sectarian killings, once daily events, have tapered off in recent months.
But deadly attacks persist. On Monday, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in eastern Baghdad killed one policeman and injured five other people, police and hospital officials said.
Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, said Sunday that militants have fled the capital and are trying to establish strongholds in vulnerable areas. He credited intelligence gleaned from Iraqis tired of militant violence, as well as American efforts to track down insurgents' financing, safe houses and bomb-making facilities to the decline in violence around the country.
But, Smith said, "the enemy has dispersed well away from the cities into the countryside."
In a Shiite region about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying a popular police chief with a reputation for leading crackdowns against militias and resisting pressure from religious and political groups to release favored members. The death Sunday of Brig. Gen. Qais al-Maamouri, the police chief of Babil's provincial capital of Hillah, was the latest in a series of assassinations against provincial leaders in the mainly Shiite region.
"This criminal act reflects the deep bitterness inside the terrorist groups who failed to destabilize the security of Babil province due to the great work of the late police chief," said the head of the provincial council's security committee, Hassan Watwet.
Watwet said al-Qaida - largely Iraqi Sunni - was the prime suspect in al-Maamouri's death. The killing was a major blow to efforts to calm the region as al-Maamouri was widely respected by the U.S. military and had a reputation for leading crackdowns against militia fighters and resisting pressure from religious and political groups to release favored members.
Hundreds marched along dusty roads in Babil to mourn al-Maamouri, chanting and firing guns into the air. The office of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in a statement that "Iraq has lost a good son and a bold military commander."
At least two Islamic militant Web sites on Monday called al-Maamouri a brutal, anti-militant figure and broadcast old audio clips of the slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi describing him as "God's enemy."
"We swear to God that no one like him can remain alive," said al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006.
Two southern provincial governors were killed this summer, Gov. Mohammed Ali al-Hassani of Muthanna and his colleague Gov. Khalil Jalil Hamza in neighboring Qadasiyah province, raising fears of a violent power struggle among Shiite factions in the oil-rich area.
Police chiefs have often been the targets of insurgents' attacks.
In September, the police chief in Baqouba, the capital of Diyala, was killed by a suicide bomber. Last month, the police chief in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, survived the second attempt on his life.
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