Dozens killed in Baghdad attacks

Baghdad: A car bomb killed 34 people including 25 yesterday at a busy intersection in Baghdad where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers, while 20 beheaded bodies were found on a river bank south of the capital, Iraqi police said.

Another car bomb in Baghdad targeting motorists queuing for petrol killed five people, police said. Mortar bombs also killed four people in two separate neighbourhoods in the city.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and seriously wounded another in the early hours yesterday, the British military said.

The latest attacks underscore the strength of militants in Iraq despite the arrival of 28,000 additional US troops. The unrelenting violence is pushing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Frequent target

The deadliest car bomb in Baghdad exploded in the Shiite district of Bayaa. The blast, which went off during the morning rush hour, wounded 40 people and destroyed dozens of vehicles.

The Bayaa area in southwest Baghdad has been a frequent target of car bombs blamed on Al Qaida.

"It was a horrible explosion. Many, many people have been killed," said witness Aqeel Kadhim, saying pickup trucks and ambulances rushed to take away the dead and wounded. The blast caused a huge crater where the minibuses parked.

Residents could be seen searching the burned out minibuses for bodies. Corpses, some charred beyond recognition, lay twisted on the ground.

Tens of thousands of US and Iraqi troops are engaged in an offensive against Al Qaida in an attempt to take down its car bomb networks, which have killed and maimed thousands of Iraqis. In the town of Salman Pak south of Baghdad, locals made the gruesome discovery of 20 beheaded men on the bank of the River Tigris, police said.

All the victims were wearing civilian clothes and had their hands and legs bound, police said, adding some of the heads were missing. Iraqi police had cordoned off the area while US forces had also been summoned.

Beheadings are a common tactic used by radical Sunni groups such as Al Qaida, but the discovery of such large numbers of victims in one group is rare. Police had no information on the possible motive or exactly where the men were from.

The British soldiers in Basra were on foot at the time of the blast in the southeast of the city, spokesman Major David Gell said. They were part of a routine convoy heading out of Basra and had dismounted from their armoured vehicles.

On foot

Foreign soldiers in Iraq increasingly get out of vehicles in areas known to be mined with roadside bombs to reduce the risk of more casualties should a big blast hit a single vehicle carrying a number of troops.

"It is with deep regret that I can confirm three soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device," Gell said.

The blast came a day after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as Britain's prime minister. Blair's rule ended with his popularity badly dented by the 2003 Iraq war.

Britain has handed security responsibility back to Iraq in three of four mainly Shiite southern provinces, with only the province of Basra remaining. The number of British troops in Iraq has been cut from around 7,000 to about 5,500.

More than 150 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

A total of 157,000 US troops are now in Iraq.