IRAQ: A suicide car bomber ploughed into a Shia mosque in Baghdad after dawn prayers yesterday, killing 14 people.
In a second dawn attack in the capital, guerrillas killed at least 11 policemen in an assault on a police station.
Survivors said the attackers fired mortars at the police post near the airport road in the southwest of Baghdad and then stormed the building, shooting the occupants.
Witnesses to the mosque attack, in the Sunni neighbourhood of Aadhamiya, said the car bomb followed an initial blast believed to have been caused by a mortar.
"The first blast happened just as worshippers were leaving the mosque after dawn prayers. Everyone in the area rushed to help them," said a local man sweeping up broken glass in his garden. "Then a few minutes later, a car blew up the whole crowd."
The wreckage of destroyed cars littered the street and locals tried to mop up pools of blood with pieces of cloth. There have been heightened fears of sectarian conflict in Iraq since February this year when US forces discovered CDs and documents linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that threatened to stoke Sunni-Shia tensions.
During the assault on the police station, the attackers set free about 50 prisoners and set two police pickup trucks ablaze.
In an Internet statement, the guerrilla group led by Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack.
An American soldier was also killed by a roadside bomb near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk yesterday, the US military said. At least 988 US military and Pentagon personnel have been killed in action since the start of the war in Iraq, according to the latest Pentagon casualty figures.
Guerrillas trying to drive out US-led troops have mounted repeated attacks on Iraqi security forces, targeting police stations and checkpoints with suicide bombs and kidnapping and killing scores of police and members of the National Guard.
The violence threatens to derail Iraq's first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for January 30th. The US military has acknowledged that insurgent violence will intensify as the poll approaches and has announced it will increase its troop strength in Iraq to 150,000.
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. Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein, fear they will be marginalised in the new Iraq as the 60 per cent Shia majority exercises its newfound political clout.
Shias, however, insist the elections should go ahead on time, arguing that any delay would be a surrender to terrorism.
Iraq's Kurds in the north say they are ready for elections, but would accept a delay if others wanted it. - (Reuters)