Bombs, Other Attacks Kill 20 Around Iraq

Leader's Party, Security Officers Targeted

Iraqi security officers and civilians restrain a man they said they had caught trying to plant explosives under civilian vehicles in a busy area of Baghdad. (Reuters)

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 -- At least 20 people were killed in Iraq on Monday by car bombers, roadside bombs, assault rifle fire and an explosive rigged to a headless body, as insurgents appeared to intensify efforts to derail nationwide elections set for Jan. 30.

The day's first car bomb exploded around 9:30 a.m. outside the headquarters of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's political party, the Iraqi National Accord, shortly before Allawi was to appear at a news conference detailing a slate of candidates. Allawi was not injured, but three police officers and the bomber were killed, according to a government spokesman.

"What I saw was heavy smoke and fire and policemen shooting continuously. It was as if I was in a battle," said a taxi driver who identified himself only as Sanaa.

It was the second recent car bomb to target a political party. On Dec. 27, a suicide bomber killed more than a dozen people outside the headquarters of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, another former exile party active in the interim government.

The Ansar al-Sunna Army, the group that asserted responsibility for a Dec. 21 bombing inside a U.S. military base in Mosul, posted an Internet statement heralding "more good news. . . . Body pieces of the apostates were scattered everywhere, and their cars caught on fire. Ambulances rushed to transport dozens of injuries. Thanks and gratitude to God."

A Saudi newspaper reported Monday that the Mosul bomber was a Saudi medical student whose father was informed of his death by the Ansar al-Sunna group. The attack killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. service members.

Another car bomber Monday killed himself and four Iraqi National Guardsmen at a checkpoint in Dijail, a town north of Baghdad not far from where 22 guardsmen aboard a shuttle bus were killed on Sunday by a car bomb. The victims of Monday's attack were members of the guard's 210th Battalion, according to Mohammed Hamza, 43, an assistant physician at the guard's medical facility.

The third car bomb was detonated around 3 p.m. by a man who pretended his sport-utility vehicle had broken down near a gate to the Green Zone, the fortified area of Baghdad that houses Iraq's interim government and the U.S. and British embassies. The man waited for a convoy of the large, late-model SUVs that are widely known to carry Western contractors, diplomats and security personnel, then exploded his vehicle.

The blast blew one vehicle off the roadway. An Associated Press photographer reported seeing three bodies burning inside. The AP quoted a U.S. Embassy spokesman as saying the victims worked for Kroll Inc., a risk-assessment and security firm based in New York.

Neighbors, who were physically shaken by the explosion, emerged from houses to clear their yards of twisted steel and body parts. Jassem Ahmad, 17, carried a shovel and pointed to the freshly turned earth where he had just buried two feet, a piece of black shirt and a lower nose and chin -- all presumably belonging to the bomber.

"There was a small beard too, and I buried all that myself right here," he said.

[On Tuesday, another car bomb exploded near an entrance to the Green Zone complex, killing at least four people, a policeman told the Reuters news agency. The blast was set off at a police post.]

In another attack, insurgents booby-trapped the decapitated body of a civilian in the city of Tall Afar, west of Mosul. When Iraqi police investigated the corpse, it exploded, killing one officer and wounding two, the government said in a statement.

Six National Guardsmen were killed by a pair of roadside bombs in Tikrit, the home town of former president Saddam Hussein. In Baiji, an oil refining city in the Sunni Triangle midway between Mosul and Baghdad, a police major and a captain were killed in a hail of gunfire from a white sedan, police said. And in Baqubah, another insurgent hot spot about 35 miles northeast of the capital, gunmen assassinated a city councilman from nearby Khalis, according to an emergency room physician at Baqubah General Hospital.

[A U.S. Marine was killed in action early Tuesday in Anbar province, where insurgents have mounted countless attacks against U.S. forces. The Marines gave no further details.]

Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Khalid Saffar in Baghdad, Salih Saif Aldin in Baiji and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.