At least 15 people died and more than 80 were wounded when a car bomb exploded on Thursday morning on a busy Baghdad road, hospital sources and police said, as insurgents maintained a relentless and bloody onslaught. Medics at Kindi hospital said they received the bodies of 12 dead, three of them women, along with 76 wounded, following the blast in the eastern Jadida district. Another three dead and eight wounded were taken to Ibn-Anafees hospital. An interior ministry official said the blast, shortly before 11:00am in a busy mixed neighbourhood, was the work of a suicide bomber. A second bomb, planted in a parked car, exploded three hours later in a western area of the city as a US military convoy drove by, the official said.
It was not immediately known if any US soldiers were hurt, but five Iraqi civilians in five cars were wounded in the attack in the Khadra district, the official added. A third car bomb struck a police station in Kirkuk, killing one civilian and wounding two. Two more civilians and a policeman were wounded in two more bomb blasts in Kirkuk. Police chief General Turhan Yusef said the explosions occurred in areas predominantly inhabited by Kurds.
In further unrest, a general in Iraq's newly-formed army and a police colonel were shot dead in separate incidents in Baghdad, security officials said.
Near Baiji, 200 kilometers north of the capital, four Iraqi soldiers died in overnight fighting with rebels.
In Samarra, 125 kilometers north of Baghdad, two Iraqi soldiers were killed by a bomb blast near a checkpoint on the outskirts of town. And two bakery employees were shot dead in the north of the town.
Near Charkat, 35 kilometers north of here, two policemen and a civilian were killed in clashes with rebels late Wednesday. Thirteen more soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
Meanwhile, two US marines died Wednesday during a vast military operation, code-named Matador, near the Syrian border.
The sweep, in which a total of five US soldiers have now died, aims to cut the rebellion's supply of arms and foreign fighters, including those reinforcing al Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The US military said its forces of about 1,000 troops have killed more than 100 rebels in the area over the past five days.
Meanwhile, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Thursday he could not confirm reports that a deadline hanging over an Australian being held hostage in Iraq had been extended.
The fate of 63-year-old contractor Douglas Wood remained unknown, two days after the expiry of the deadline set by the kidnappers for Sydney to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq.
In other developments, authorities here and UN officials issued a report highlighting the desperate situation of 27 million ordinary Iraqis who have suffered for years under international sanctions, followed by war.
Eighty-five percent of Iraqi households lack stable electricity, only 54 percent have access to clean water and 37 percent to sewerage, according to the report entitled "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004".
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