Baghdad car bombs kill 34 children

Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a US military convoy in Baghdad, killing 41 people, 34 of them children who were rushing to collect sweets from American troops.

In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a US checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a US soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar.

A statement apparently from the Tawhid and Jihad group of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said later it was behind the three attacks. Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for many of Iraq's bloodiest suicide bombings and the killings of foreign captives.

The Baghdad bombs went off as crowds gathered to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or the US convoy passing by was the target.

The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to help the initial victims, residents said.

Ten US soldiers were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, the military said. Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed 41 dead and 139 wounded, the vast majority children.

Instability is steadily mounting just weeks before the US presidential election in November and four months before Iraq is due to hold its own nationwide polls. Attacks on American troops have risen to around 80 a day from 40 a month ago.

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, speaking in London, condemned the violence and pledged the election would go ahead on time.

Doctors at Yarmouk hospital struggled to treat the flood of victims, as pools of blood formed on the floor.

The attack gouged a crater in the road and wrecked a dozen burnt-out cars and a bus. US troops sealed off the area with tanks, and helicopters circled overhead.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber had killed two Iraqi police and a US soldier by blowing up his car near a US checkpoint at a crowded intersection in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad. Around 60 people, including women and children, were wounded.

Another soldier was killed when a rocket hit a US logistics base near Baghdad. The confirmed deaths of the two soldiers raised to at least 802 the number of US troops killed in action since the start of the war.

In northern Iraq, another car bomb blew up near an Iraqi police convoy in the centre of Tal Afar, a rebellious town close to the Syrian border. Hospital officials said four civilians had been killed and 19 wounded. Five policemen were also hurt.

In rebel-held Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, US forces destroyed a building they said was being used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose group is threatening to behead a British hostage. Iraqi doctors said at least three people were killed and eight wounded in the attack.

Zarqawi's group beheaded Americans Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley this month after US forces and the Iraqi government refused to release women prisoners. The group says it will also kill the Briton Kenneth Bigley, 62, who was snatched along with the American pair.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is to send a senior diplomat to Amman to try to secure the release of two French journalists held in Iraq for six weeks, the French Foreign Ministry said.

Separately, a militant group said it had seized 10 people, including two Indonesian women, working for an electronics firm in Iraq, Al Jazeera television reported.

Lebanon said three of its nationals had been seized. It was not clea r if it was part of the same incident. Indonesia said it was not aware of any of its nationals being abducted.