Suicide truck bomb kills 7 Iraqis

BAGHDAD - Guerrillas seeking to topple Iraq's new government exploded a suicide truck bomb outside a mayor's office and shot a security official on Monday, killing at least seven people in an escalating campaign of violence.

The truck bomb exploded in the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of the oil city of Kirkuk, killing five people and wounding 18.

Among the dead was the brother of a senior official in one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, police said. The official, Mohammed Mahmoud Jigareti, was wounded in the blast. Both men had been in a car that was entering the mayor's office compound when the bomber struck.

Insurgents also kept up pressure on the US military. Three American soldiers were killed in two separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday, the military said, and another US soldier was killed by a bomb blast near Tikrit.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed Wael Rubaie, an official in the operations room in the Ministry of State for National Security, a government statement said. His driver was also killed.

More than a dozen senior government officials have been shot dead in Baghdad in well planned attacks in recent weeks.

US and Iraqi forces detained 285 suspected insurgents "terrorists" in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib after a major search operation, the US military said. It said Operation Squeeze Play was designed to kill or capture guerrillas who have been staging attacks in the capital.

Mainly Sunni insurgents have stepped up violence since a new Shi'ite-led government was announced in late April, killing more than 500 people in a wave of suicide bombings and ambushes.

Iraqi officials are hoping to give Sunnis a bigger role in politics after they were sidelined in January 30 elections, in a strategy designed to defuse the Sunni-led insurgency.

Tit-for-tat killings between Shi'ites and Sunnis have raised fears that violence will push Iraq towards sectarian civil war.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq who Iraqi officials accuse of trying to spark a full-scale sectarian conflict, has warned Sunnis not to join the political process because it would make them infidels.

Zarqawi's group said on Sunday it killed a US pilot it had captured and posted pictures of his identity papers on the Internet, naming him as Neenus Khoshaba.

But 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," Boulous 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