Iraqi motorbike suicide bomber kills six

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber on a motorbike killed himself and six other people when his motorbike exploded on Sunday in the mainly Shi'ite city of Musayyib, south of Baghdad, police said.

Nineteen people were wounded in the blast. The killings followed a day of violence across Iraq where the Shi'ite-and Kurdish-led government and its US backers are facing a Sunni Arab insurgency, with daily bombings and shootings reported.

Earlier on Sunday a suicide car bomber attacked an elite Iraqi police unit in Baghdad, killing 13 commandos. Ten were also wounded, police said. That bomb followed clashes overnight between US troops and Shi'ite militiamen loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the eastern Baghdad district of Sadr City.

South of the capital, in Hilla, a bomber on a bicycle blew himself up in a crowded vegetable market, killing four people, including a woman and a child, and wounding 48, police said.

And in western Baghdad, gunmen held up an armoured finance ministry convoy, killing two guards and wounding nine before making off with $850,000 in cash, police said.

The attacks come three weeks before Iraq holds a referendum on a new draft constitution amid a general increase in unrest.

The US military has said it expects a surge in violence in the run-up to the referendum, set for Oct. 15, with Iraqis strongly divided over a document that was supposed to unite them and lay the foundations for a more stable future.

- REUTERS