Insurgents kill 23 Iraqis countrywide

Guerillas shot dead 17 Iraqis working for US forces north of Baghdad yesterday and killed six other people, including three Iraqi National Guards, taking 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 yesterday, killing 17 Iraqis and wounding 13 others.

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.

And later yesterday, gunmen killed two National Guards and wounded four others in an attack near Latifiya, a town south of Baghdad that has seen persistent unrest, officials said.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying Kurdish peshmerga fighters in the city of Mosul, 390 kilometres 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 guerilla assault on a police station in the capital.

At least six US troops have also been killed since 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 guerilla attacks and intimidation.

There even continues to be unrest in Falluja, a city west of Baghdad that US forces invaded last month to quash insurgents who had been holed up there for months. The plan was to pacify and start rebuilding the community in time for the January poll.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which entered Falluja late last month to help with relief efforts in the shattered city, withdrew yesterday due to the dangers of operating, with rebels and US forces still clashing in several areas.

The Red Crescent was the only aid agency in Falluja.

Over the past year, US authorities have invested heavily in recruiting and training the military-style National Guard and police ahead of elections, 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," Mr Brahimi told NRC Handelsblad.

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