BAGHDAD • A wave of bomb and mortar attacks, including a strike on Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, have killed eight people in the Iraqi capital, officials reported yesterday.

At least four civilians were killed and 23 wounded in the deadliest attack at a police centre in the Al Yarmuk district of western Baghdad, interior ministry and hospital officials said. The victims were waiting to enlist in the force when the bomber struck. Iraq's security forces and police recruits have often been a target of insurgent attacks in the violence-ravaged country.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber ploughed his vehicle into a police car in the same district, killing a policeman and a civilian and wounding six other people.

Another three people were killed and seven wounded yesterday in a mortar attack on the Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government offices and foreign embassies including the US mission.

An interior ministry official said the attack apparently targeted the defence ministry but that the mortar shell landed at one of the entrances to the zone.

Just over a week ago, a Filipino man was killed and two female compatriots were wounded in another mortar attack on the Green Zone. The US military, meanwhile, announced yesterday that a US soldier died when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb as it travelled through the east of the capital.

The death on Saturday brings to 4,092 the number of American soldiers killed since the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.

US troops last month saw their lowest level of losses since the American-led invasion. The number killed in May dropped to 19, with the previous low being 20 in February 2004.