Rebels bracing for a US-led assault on their Falluja and Ramadi strongholds showed their muscle today with a bloody car bombing in Baghdad, strikes on oil pipelines and several attacks on Iraqi security forces.
A morning car bomb blast at the Education Ministry brought fresh carnage to the busy streets of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding eight, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
"I'm not crying because I'm wounded, but because of my brother. I was with him and I don't know what happened to him," said a weeping Abbas Kadhim, 32, who was hit in the stomach by fragments of concrete as he sat in his car near the ministry.
The blast in Baghdad's mainly Sunni Adhamiya district badly damaged the Education Ministry building and destroyed 31 cars.
Flames licked the body of an elderly man killed in the explosion, which scattered body parts across the street.
There was no word on the motive for the bombing, which occurred on the US presidential election day.
With US Marines poised for an onslaught on the rebellious Sunni Muslim cities of Falluja and Ramadi, part of a drive to pacify Iraq before national elections due in January, insurgents seemed bent on showing their power.
Saboteurs mounted the biggest attacks yet on Iraq's oil infrastructure, blowing up four pipelines in the north and halting most exports via Turkey, oil officials said.
Last night's pipeline attacks also sharply reduced crude supplies to Iraq's biggest refinery at Baiji.
In the northern city of Mosul, a suspected car bomb blew up near an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing two Guards and wounding four, witnesses and survivors said.