Guerrillas kill 26 in renewed Iraq attacks

BAGHDAD - Guerrillas bent on toppling Iraq's new US-backed government detonated bombs at a Baghdad restaurant and a Shi'ite mosque in a series of attacks that killed at least 26 and wounded 130.

In the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, up to 30 people were feared killed or wounded after two car bombs exploded outside a building housing a Shi'ite organisation, police sources said.

"I don't have a final number for the dead or wounded but it's between 20 and 30," a police source in Tal Afar said, adding, "some are still trapped."

The bombings come amid a surge in sectarian violence over the past three weeks, since the formation of Iraq's first Shi'ite-led government.

The campaign of violence by mostly Sunni Arab insurgents has killed more than 500 people since the government was formed promising greater stability.

In the deadliest attack on Monday, a car bomb exploded at lunch time outside a northern Baghdad restaurant, killing eight people and wounding around 90, police and hospital officials said.

Later, a suicide car bomber targeted a Shi'ite mosque in Mahmoudiya, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite town 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 23, many of them children, doctors said. Five of those killed were from the same family, they said.

"The kids were playing outside the mosque when a car came up quickly and then exploded," said witness Mohammed Awad. "So many women and children were injured."

CIVIL WAR FEARS

The rise in sectarianism, which has seen hundreds of tit-for-tat killings, has raised fears that Iraq could slide toward civil war.

Al Qaeda organisation in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks in the country, earlier said it was behind the assassination of a government official and his driver as they were heading for work in Baghdad.

The morning assassination of Wael Rubaie, an official in the operations room of the Ministry of State for National Security, was the latest in a long line of targeted killings and it came on another bloody day for the country.

In Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city of Kirkuk, a suicide truck bomb exploded outside the mayor's office, killing five and wounding 18, local police said.

Guerrillas also struck in Samarra, targeting a US base with two suicide car bombs and a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Four Iraqis were killed and four US soldiers were among the wounded.

The car bombings in Tal Afar near Mosul, which caused a building to collapse, appeared to target a Turkman-Shia sheikh, Hasan Bagdash, police sources said. It was the second failed assassination attempt on Bagdash in recent days.

Leaders of Iraq's Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs have moved in the past few days to try to dispel the rising sectarian tensions, which have deepened since Shi'ites won elections in January, leaving once-dominant Sunni Arabs sidelined.

MEDIATION

Moqtada al-Sadr, a young Shi'ite cleric who led two armed uprisings against US troops last year, on Sunday sent a delegation to see the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association in an effort to mediate between the divided sects.

Another team met representatives of SCIRI, the main Shi'ite party, and its militia, the Badr Organisation. Officials in Sadr's office said a "summit" could be held to aid reconciliation between the two sides.

On Sunday, three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks in the northern city, and another soldier was killed by a bomb blast near Tikrit, the US military said.

US and Iraqi forces detained 285 suspected insurgents in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib after a major operation designed to kill or capture guerrillas in the capital, the US military said.

Zarqawi's group said on Sunday it killed a man it accused of being a US pilot, and posted pictures of his identity papers on the internet, naming him as Neenus Khoshaba.

The man's brother, Boulus, said Neenus had never worked for the US military and had recently returned to Iraq seeking business opportunities after studying in the United States.

Neenus was last seen just before heading to a meeting with oil officials.

"All we know is he has been kidnapped," Boulus said. "Today we heard from satellite channels that Zarqawi killed him."

Insurgents have kidnapped over 150 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis over the past two years. Many were released but about a third were killed, some by beheading.

Iraq's government said on Monday it had captured an insurgent related to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most-wanted aide of Saddam Hussein still on the run. A government statement said Muthana al-Douri was captured near Tikrit last week.

- REUTERS