Bomb kills 20 in Iraq after bloodiest month for US

BASRA, Iraq - A car bomb killed 20 people in Iraq's second city of Basra today at the end of the bloodiest month for US troops in Iraq since early this year.

Witnesses said a suicide bomber targeted Iraqi troops.

Seven US troops were killed by bombs near Baghdad, taking October's death toll to 93, the highest in one month since January, when 107 died. The number of Americans killed in Iraq passed the 2,000 mark a week ago.

The blast came when Basra's bustling Algiers Street area was packed with festive crowds visiting restaurants and enjoying the cool of one of the last evenings of the holy month of Ramadan.

An Interior Ministry official said 20 people were killed and 45 wounded. Several buildings and vehicles were devastated and rescue workers picked body parts from the street.

"An old car drove at an Iraqi army patrol and exploded," one eyewitness, named Ahmed, said. "Many people were killed."

Deep in the majority Shi'ite heartland, the Gulf coast city has been spared much of the violence Sunni Arab insurgents have inflicted further north. There has been tension among rival Shi'ite militias, however, and 16 people were killed by an evening car bomb in September.

In the far west, where US marines have been fighting for months to stem a flow of foreign Arab fighters and funds coming through Syria, local doctors and tribal leaders accused American forces of killing some 40 civilians in an air strike.

The military said it knew of no civilian deaths and believed it had killed an al Qaeda leader targeted by precision bombing.

Two roadside bombings near Baghdad on Monday killed six soldiers and the military announced a Marine had been killed by a similar device near Falluja on Sunday.

WORST MONTH

That made October, which saw Iraqis vote for a constitution and put Saddam Hussein on trial, the worst month for US forces since January, when attacks by Sunni Arab rebels surged before an election that brought Kurds and majority Shi'ites to power.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned at the weekend of a similar increase in bloodshed before another parliamentary vote in December, although officials hope a decision by Sunni leaders not to repeat their January boycott of the poll may deprive the militants of support within Saddam's once dominant minority.

President George W. Bush, responding to concern over the rising US death toll and declining support for the Iraq campaign, said last week more sacrifices would be necessary.

Militants claiming to speak for some nationalist rebels have said they held fire around the October 15 constitutional referendum to encourage a big Sunni turnout and may do so again, despite disappointment that Sunnis narrowly failed to veto the charter.

But foreign-influenced Islamist radicals like al Qaeda show no sign of letting up. A suicide bomber lured Shi'ites to their death with a truck laden with dates on Saturday, killing 30 in a small town north of Baghdad, and there are fears of more violence around this week's end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Launching one of two big Sunni-led blocs expected to figure prominently among dozens of parties on the December 15 ballot, one leader set the tone for his campaign by calling for an end to US occupation. He criticised rivals who returned from exile after Saddam's fall as beholden to Washington or religion.

"We are ... working for the liberation of our country," Saleh al-Mutlak said, launching his Iraqi Unified Front as a secular pan-Iraqi bloc. "You won't find anyone in our group who rode into Iraq on an American tank or on a sectarian horse."

Various secular groups accuse the ruling United Alliance, led by Islamists once exiled in Tehran, of seeking to bring Iraq under the influence of fellow Shi'ites in non-Arab Iran.

LETHAL BOMBS

The order in which parties appear on the lengthy ballot paper will be drawn by lot on Tuesday. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said that, unlike in January, up to a million Iraqis living abroad may not be able to vote due to the cost and a tight schedule.

Monday's roadside bomb that killed four soldiers near Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad, was among the most lethal of recent weeks. US commanders have been voicing concern about increasing power and sophistication of such bombs.

Devices capable of penetrating armoured vehicles have become more common this year, based on technology US and British officials say has been introduced from Iran.

"We see an adversary that ... continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise standoff-type weapons," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said.

Two soldiers were killed in a similar attack near Balad, 60 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, and the military said a marine was killed by a bomb near Falluja, to the west, on Sunday.

The US death toll in Iraq is now at least 2,026.

Near the Syrian border on Monday, US aircraft bombed a house close to Karabila before dawn in what the military said was a precision strike on an al Qaeda leader.

Hospital doctors in nearby Qaim said 40 people were killed and 20 wounded, many of them women and children.

"Civilian deaths cannot be verified and hospital officials frequently make such claims," US spokesman Colonel David Lapan said. "We believe the targeted terrorist leader was killed."

- REUTERS