Rebels kill dozens in Iraq

A suicide bomber caused carnage at a Shi'ite funeral and guerillas ambushed a vital fuel convoy outside Baghdad in a wave of attacks that killed nearly 60 people yesterday, the bloodiest day in Iraq for weeks.

Car bombs went off in the capital and in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, suggesting a level of coordination that may be a response by Sunni Arab insurgents to last month's largely peaceful parliamentary elections.

The funeral attack was the bloodiest single incident since the vote, killing 36 and wounding 40 in the town of Miqdadiya, 100 kilometres northeast of the capital. The area is rapidly emerging as the most violent in the country, eclipsing the previous hotspots of Falluja and Ramadi to the west of Baghdad.

The victims were gathered at a cemetery to mourn a local member of the Dawa party, headed nationally by Shi'ite Islamist Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Assailants fired mortar bombs, forcing the mourners to take cover amid the gravestones, before a bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up among them, security officials said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the attack as "a horrendous crime committed against innocent civilians in total disrespect for human life and dignity", UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, on a visit to Lebanon, described it as "mindless terrorism".

Soon after the attack, guerillas with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns ambushed 60 fuel tankers north of Baghdad, destroying 20 of them, police and oil officials said.

A group called the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for the assault in an internet statement, saying the convoy belonged "to the enemy occupier", a reference to the 150,000 US soldiers stationed in the country.

By nightfall, police said there were still isolated clashes on the road and that at least four people had been killed - a driver and three members of the convoy's security team.

The convoy was part of a major government effort to ease fuel shortages in the capital following the recent closure of Iraq's main refinery at Baiji in the north.

The refinery has now reopened and Iraq has begun to export oil again through its southern ports. The Oil Ministry said Iraq was shipping 1.5 million barrels per day, substantially more than the average for December, when exports slipped to a post- war low of just 1.1 million barrels.