Near-simultaneous explosions believed to have been caused by car bombs ripped through three police stations today in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, witnesses said. There were reports of many casualties, including police.

First reports from hospital officials indicated at least 40 dead and 200 injured in blasts, which were reported just after 9 a.m. in Iraq (midnight CDT).

At one station in the Saudia district of Basra, four vehicles were seen destroyed including two school buses. At least one of the school buses appeared to have been full of passengers, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.

On Tuesday, guerrillas fired a barrage of mortar rounds at Baghdad’s largest prison, killing 22 prisoners in an attack a U.S. general said might have been an attempt to spark an inmate uprising against American guards. The slain prisoners were all security detainees, meaning they were suspected of belonging to the anti-U.S. insurgency or to Saddam’s former regime.

A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul: It was the 100th American combat death in April, the deadliest month since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003.

At least 1,100 Iraqis have been killed in fighting since the start of the month, according to an Associated Press count based on reports from hospitals and Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The prison attack was puzzling to U.S. military commanders, who consider the 4,400 so-called “security detainees” to be anti-American insurgents, some of whom are suspected of launching similar mortar and missile attacks.

Also Tuesday, Iraqi leaders named a tribunal of judges and prosecutors to try Saddam Hussein, placing a longtime opponent of the ousted dictator in the forefront of the case against him and his former Baathist inner circle, a spokesman announced.

Salem Chalabi, a U.S.-educated lawyer and nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, was appointed general director of the tribunal, which has a 2004-2005 budget of $75 million, INC spokesman Entefadh Qanbar said.

U.S Army soldiers check an Iraqi car driving into the embattled Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Attackers on Tuesday fired 12 mortars into the Abu Ghraib prison, killing 22 Iraqi detainees and injuring 92.

Ahmed Chalabi, a longtime exile who returned to Iraq and was named to the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, is mistrusted as an outsider by many Iraqis who want to see Saddam prosecuted by Iraqis who were present under his brutal rule.

A date has yet to be set for the trial of Saddam, who was captured by U.S. troops in December and has since been held by U.S. troops at an undisclosed location in or near Baghdad.

In other developments Tuesday:

l Late Tuesday, the Dominican Republic said it would pull out its soldiers, which number about 300.

l Pentagon contractor Halliburton identified three of its employees as among four bodies recovered this month near Abu Ghraib. The three Americans were among seven contractors killed or carried off in an April 9 guerrilla attack that obliterated a fuel convoy in a huge plume of flames. The fourth contractor, described as “a foreign national,” hasn’t been identified.