Baghdad - Mortars fell on Baghdad's Green Zone soon after US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in the Iraqi capital on a surprise visit Tuesday night. Soon after Biden met with the head of US forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, and US Ambassador Chris Hill, the signal to take cover sounded within the heavily fortified compound, according to a pool report.
The mortars caused no apparent damage, and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Just before the mortars fell, Biden told reporters that "he has a personal relationship" with Iraqi leaders, and that he had "won a measure of trust" from them.
He said Iraqi leaders had consulted him in the past about national elections scheduled to take place in January.
"A successful election is the necessary condition for some of the outstanding political issues to be resolved," Biden said.
The US vice president said Iraqi politicians had told him that it was likely that a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement governing the continued presence of US soldiers in Iraq was "likely to happen," but that there remained "a number of steps that need to be taken."
"I'm not sure it's settled yet," he said.
If the agreement does not pass a referendum, US forces might be forced to leave ahead of schedule.
Continued violence across the country preceded Biden's visit.
In the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, two separate attacks left one man killed and three wounded, police there told the German Press Agency dpa.
In the first attack, a man stabbed a member of Iraq's Turkmen minority to death in the southern neighbourhood of Aden.
In the centre of the city, a bomb blast wounded three people, including two policemen, police said.
Hundreds of Turkmen protesters filled the streets of Kirkuk last week to protest US plans to begin joint patrols of the disputed territories to the north of the city with Kurdish militias.
Politicians representing members of the Turkmen minority in the city have been among the most resolutely opposed to Kurdish ambitions to create an independent state with Kirkuk as its capital.
Violence also continued in central Iraq. In Hilla, a police officer died when a bomb attached to his car exploded, killing him instantly, police there told dpa.
The officer was on way to work at the local police station.
Hilla, the capital city of Babil province, lies 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The region has been the site of persistent violence in recent days. On Monday, a bomb planted near a cafe in the nearby town of Iskandariyah killed one person.
Four people were injured in that blast and were admitted to a nearby hospital in the town, roughly 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The bomb appeared to be retaliation for a police raid that on Sunday netted 21 men, many of them wanted for links to al-Qaeda, in connection with a string of recent bomb attacks and plotting further attacks in the area.
Seven of the suspects were captured in a raid in Iskandariyah. The other 14 were arrested in Hilla.
Those arrests, in turn, followed twin bombings that on Thursday killed two people in a market in Hilla and injured at least 21. Witnesses said the bombings followed a gunfight between militants and police.
