US fires new salvo at Syria

"Innocent people are getting blown up in Iraq because Syria is allowing its territory to be used by terrorists bent on sowing murder and mayhem in Iraq and they're not going to succeed," Deputy State Department Spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters Friday.

He went on to insist that the international community "is not going to let this continue to happen," but did not say whether a US complaint to the UN Security Council was in the offing.

The deputy spokesman added the international community was going to act "because Syria, more and more, is being recognized as a destabilising element in the region."

Nearly 200 people have been killed in Iraq since Wednesday as Islamic militants unleashed a new wave of suicide bombings, targeting mainly members of the Shia community.

The death toll reached about nearly 150 Wednesday, at least 23 Thursday and more than 20 on Friday as vehicles exploded in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

The worst bombing in the Iraqi capital claimed the lives of 112 Shia day labourers as they waited for work in the Iraqi capital Wednesday.

In one of the most direct attempts to date to blame Damascus for mayhem in Iraq, Ereli argued that the bombings could happen primarily because the Syrian government was failing to put an end to movements of Islamic radicals through its territory.

"Syria and Syrian territory and activities in Syria... that the Syrian government can do something about that are directly connected to the insurgency in Iraq," he stated.