A suicide bomber blew himself up amidst a group of Iraqi army recruits in northern Iraq on Friday, killing 25 people and wounding 35, as Muslims protested in Baghdad against alleged government torture. Police said the attack occurred outside a municipal building in Rabia, a town 80-km (50 miles) north-west of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and a focus of an 18-month-old insurgent campaign against US-backed Iraqi security forces.
Separately, American and Iraqi forces killed nine guerrillas, five of them Syrians, in a small village north-west of the capital, a US military statement said.
The guerrillas had fired rocket-propelled grenades and small arms at a joint US and Iraqi patrol, prompting US forces to respond with an air strike, the statement said.
Iraqi forces and US are struggling to contain insurgency bent on toppling the present government. The insurgents, made up of foreign fighters, religious militants and loyalists of toppled leader Saddam Hussein, have kept up a relentless campaign of suicide bombings, shootings and assassinations that have killed thousands of people.
FIRE AND STEEL: But the violence has continued unabated and people's emotions boiled over on the streets of Baghdad on Friday, amid fears that tensions between the major communities could spill over into civil war. Over 1,000 protesters accused the government of pursuing sectarian policies and torturing and killing in "the new Iraq of fire and steel".
They dressed up as soldiers and used drills; wooden clubs and electric wires to act out what they said did government forces against them use the techniques.
The protest took place outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and Western embassies.
"No to the sectarian practices of the Iraqi security forces," read one banner.
The government has denied similar accusations and says security forces are under strict orders to respect human rights.
Two US soldiers were killed on Thursday when their unit came under attack by small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades in Cykla, about 200 km (120 miles) west of Baghdad, a US military statement said.