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BAGHDAD - Iraqi insurgents, using a suicide bomber to explode a fuel tanker, launched one of their biggest assaults in months on a joint US and Iraqi outpost today, killing two US soldiers and wounding 17 others.
The attack, north of Baghdad, was part of a day of bombings and shootings by militants as tens of thousands of US and Iraqi forces fanned out in the capital in a new operation to crack down on rampant sectarian violence.
In other attacks, more than 40 Iraqis were killed, including 10 in bombings in Baghdad.
Near Falluja in the west, 13 members of a single family were shot dead by suspected al Qaeda militants while in nearby Ramadi two suicide bombers killed 11 people in an attack on the home of a tribal leader who had opposed al Qaeda.
Iraqi police said a suicide bomber at the wheel of a fuel tanker blew himself up as US forces entered an Iraqi police station in the town of Tarmiya, which US troops use as an outpost.
The town is a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold some 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad in the notoriously violent province of Salahaddin.
US military helicopters hovered over the area transporting the wounded after the blast, which almost demolished the police station. A US military spokesman in Baghdad declined to provide more specific information on the attack, a rare coordinated assault on a US base.
"It was not just a spontaneous attack. It wasn't just people taking potshots at us," Major Steven Lamb told Reuters.
A US military statement said US soldiers secured the area and evacuated the wounded. It was not known if any insurgents were killed.
More than 3,100 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The violence by militants came a day after two bombs killed 60 people in a Shi'ite market area in Baghdad in the bloodiest assault since the new crackdown by US and Iraqi forces began on Wednesday.
US military officials have warned that militants could strike in areas outside Baghdad while US and Iraqi forces focus their efforts inside the capital to end sectarian violence that authorities fear could lead to all-out civil war.
The bombings in the capital that killed 10 people underscored the challenge of stabilizing the city that is the epicenter of Iraq's bloodletting.
Family ambush
Violence also flared to the north and west of the capital, leaving more than 20 people dead including the 13 near Falluja who were returning from a funeral.
In that attack, suspected al Qaeda militants pulled the family of mourners from a minibus and gunned them down, including two young boys, after finding out they were from a Sunni tribe opposed to al Qaeda, police said.
The western city of Falluja is in the Sunni Arab insurgent bastion of Anbar province.
Among the Baghdad attacks, four people died when a bomb tore through a minibus in Karrada, a mostly Shi'ite area where Christians also live. A Reuters photographer saw charred bodies lying on the street after the blast blew off the top of the bus.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, under pressure from Washington to rein in violence, had trumpeted the crackdown as a
"brilliant success".
More than 110,000 Iraqi and US security forces are taking part in Operation Imposing Law, aimed at curbing sectarian violence by Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias.
The campaign does appear to have sharply reduced the number of killings by death squads in Baghdad, from 40-50 a day, to three reported on Monday. But US generals, mindful of similar crackdowns last year that failed, have been more cautious and have warned that militants were adapting their tactics.
- REUTERS
