Insurgents kill 21 Iraqis north of Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Guerrillas shot dead 17 Iraqis working for the US army and killed a National Guard commander and three bodyguards in attacks north of Baghdad on Sunday that took the toll from three days of violence to more than 70.

Insurgents have launched a series of attacks in Sunni areas since Friday, mainly targeting Iraqi security forces and civilians working with the US military.

The US 1st Infantry Division said gunmen in two cars opened fire on two civilian buses carrying Iraqis to work at an arms dump outside Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit on Sunday. As well as the 17 killed, 13 Iraqis were wounded.

A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle beside a National Guard convoy in the rebel stronghold of Baiji, north of Tikrit, killing local National Guard commander Mohammed Jassim Rumaied and three of his bodyguards, colleagues said.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Kurdish peshmerga fighters in the city of Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad, killing 16 people, Kurdish officials said. The peshmerga have been helping secure Mosul since most of the city's police fled after an insurgent onslaught last month.

Two suicide bombers also struck at a police station just outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding more than 50.

On Friday, a suicide bomb outside a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad killed 14, and 11 Iraqi police were killed in a guerrilla assault on a police station in the capital.

At least six US troops have also been killed since on Friday. Two were killed in an ambush in Mosul on Saturday, two by separate roadside bombs earlier in the day, and two Marines were killed by a suicide car bomb at the Jordanian border on Friday.

The surge in violence has fuelled fears that Iraq's first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for end-January, could be derailed by guerrilla attacks and intimidation.

Over the past year, US authorities have invested heavily in recruiting and training police and the military-style National Guard, only to see large numbers desert or not turn up to work in the face of insurgent intimidation.

The US military hopes to be able to hand over national security to Iraqi forces before the elections, and Iraqi officials say only Iraqi forces will be involved in securing polling booths, with US-led troops keeping their distance.

But insurgents still dominate several Sunni areas of Iraq, and the Pentagon has announced it will deploy an additional 12,000 US troops in coming weeks for election security, boosting troop numbers to 150,000, their highest level yet.

Many among Iraq's 20 per cent Sunni Arab minority -- from which the insurgency draws the core of its support -- have called for a delay in the elections, saying that violence in Sunni areas will prevent the polls being free and fair.

Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule, fear they will be marginalised in the new Iraq, as the 60 per cent Shi'ite majority exercises its new political clout.

Shi'ites insist the elections should go ahead on time and that any delay would be a surrender to terrorism.

Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special envoy to Iraq and the architect of January's electoral process, told a Dutch newspaper on Saturday the elections should not go ahead if the current violent environment persists.

"Elections are no magic potion, but part of a political process. They must be prepared well and take place at the right time to produce the good effects that you expect from them," Brahimi told NRC Handelsblad.

Asked if it was possible to hold elections as conditions are now, Brahimi said: "If the circumstances stay as they are, I personally don't think so."

- REUTERS