Fighting surges in Iraq

On Saturday morning, a suicide car bomber driving at high speed exploded his vehicle near an Iraqi army checkpoint in downtown Baghdad, killing three soldiers and an Iraqi civilian, police said.

The attack also wounded three Iraqi soldiers and two civilians, said police Capt. Abdel-Hussein Minsif.

A suicide bomber on a public minibus set off an explosives belt on Friday as the vehicle appro-ached a busy terminal in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least five people and wounding eight, police said. Elsewhere in the capital, a roadside bomb killed a US Army soldier whose convoy was patrolling southeastern Baghdad Friday night, raising to at least 1,913 the number of US service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Gunmen also killed a member of the commission charged with ensuring former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime are banned from the Iraqi government, police said. Thirteen commission members have been killed since it was created two years ago.

The US military declined to say if it was conducting a large offensive against Ramadi, but police and residents have reported heavy fighting there during the past week. Seven service members have died in or near the city since Sept. 1.

"There are 30 to 40 battalion-level operations going on across Iraq on any given day," said Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a US military spokesman in Baghdad. "What you are seeing is the pattern of operations that we have been conducting almost every day here."

The latest US military deaths there occurred Thursday when two soldiers were killed, one by a roadside bombing between Ramadi and Fallujah, the other in a gunbattle in Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.

Ramadi police Capt. Nasir Al-Alousi said American forces airlifted equipment into the city stadium before dawn Friday. He said clashes erupted in that area and spread to an industrial zone after sunrise, continuing until at least midday.