BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide car bomber crashed a white
Oldsmobile into a police station in Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim
enclave yesterday, killing himself, nine others and wounding as
many as 45. Earlier, gunmen - one dressed as a Shiite cleric - shot
and killed a Spanish military attache.

The violence, six months to the day after Baghdad fell to
American forces, underscored the predicament of a capital whose
deliverance from Saddam Hussein's tyranny has been repeatedly
undermined by terrorism, attacks on U.S. forces and sectarian
unrest.

The ancient city's landscape is now lined with massive concrete
blast barriers and coils of barbed wire outside hotels, government
departments and along stretches of road near U.S. military
bases.

As in previous attacks, there was no claim of responsibility for
the 8:30 a.m. bombing in Sadr City, a Baghdad district with an
estimated 2 million Shiites.

"It was a huge blast and everything became dark from the debris
and sand. I was thrown to the ground," said Mohammed Adnan, who
sells watermelons opposite the police station.

Vegetable seller Fakhriya Jarallah said two of her sons were
repairing the outside wall of the compound.

"I ran across the road like a madwoman to find out what happened
to my sons. But thanks to God they are both safe," she said.

Policemen and some in the crowd that gathered outside the police
station after the explosion offered an assortment of possible
culprits that ranged from non-Iraqi Arab militants to Saddam
loyalists and Shiite radicals angry about a cleric's arrest.

The killing of the Spanish military attache happened across town
in the upscale Mansour area about 30 minutes before the car
bombing.

Jose Antonio Bernal Gomez, an air force sergeant attached to
Spain's National Intelligence Center, was shot to death after four
men, one dressed as a Shiite cleric, knocked on the door of his
home, according to a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on
condition of anonymity. Shiite clerics generally wear black cloaks
and white headdresses; Sunnis favor lighter-colored garb.

U.S., Iraqi and Spanish authorities were investigating the
attack, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Commenting on Thursday's violence, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S.
official in Iraq, emphasized his government's commitment to
fighting terrorism, branding the perpetrators of attacks in Iraq as
individuals who have shown "wanton disregard" for the lives of
innocent people.

In other developments Thursday:

- Iraq's national electricity network - crippled by war, looting
and sabotage - has surpassed the production levels of the prewar
period for the first time in six months, Bremer reported.

- U.S. troops arrested an Iraqi resistance leader believed to be
responsible for scores of deadly attacks against American forces
around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. They also uncovered a factory
where deadly roadside bombs were being built.

- A 4th Infantry Division soldier was killed in a
rocket-propelled grenade attack on a U.S. convoy northeast of
Baghdad, the military said.

- U.S. soldiers conducted a raid near the Syrian border and
detained 112 suspects, including a high-ranking official in the
former Republican Guard.

In Sadr City, some 50 policemen had gathered in the police
station's courtyard to collect their pay when the white Oldsmobile
sped up. Two policemen on guard duty at the gate opened fire, but
the car went through, crashed into a parked vehicle and
exploded.

"I ran and got hit in the leg. When I looked back, all I could
see was fire," officer Khalid Sattar Jabar said from his hospital
bed. He said he got a look at the driver: a man with a beard and a
thick head of hair.

Mangled police cars were scattered around the bomb site, and
debris filled the large courtyard in front of the one-story police
building. The blast left a crater about 10 feet across and 4 feet
deep, said a U.S. Army officer at the scene.

Three policemen and five civilians were killed, said Capt. Sean
Kirley of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. In addition, the two
people in the car died, said Iraqi police Capt. Bassem Sami.

Hospitals reported treating 45 wounded.

The blast attracted a crowd of up to about 2,000 people. The
crowd became angry when scores of American soldiers in Humvees
arrived and put a security ring around the area. There was panic
later when two men ran in shouting that another car bomb was about
to go off; it was a false alarm.

Still later, the crowd became agitated when a rumor spread that
American soldiers were surrounding the nearby office of Muqtada
al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric who opposes the U.S. occupation. He was
not at the office, and his Baghdad representative, Sheik Qais
al-Khaza'ali, said soldiers had wanted to search the office but
left without doing so.