Rebels step up attacks

The surge in violence came as political blocs unveiled their lists of candidates for Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, which the United States and its coalition partners hope will help restore enough stability to allow them to begin bringing their forces home next year.

In Sunday's worst attack, a roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tanker trucks driving on a main road in south Baghdad, sending a fire ball up over the area and killing the two men inside, said police Capt. Ibrahim Abdul-Ridha. Four civilians in the area at the time were wounded.

Three separate drive-by shootings in the capital killed two construction workers and wounded three; seriously injured a shopkeeper in the Dora district; and hit a car carrying Cabinet adviser Ghalib Abdul Mahdi to work, wounding him and killing his driver, police said.

In Samarra, 100km north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a farmer on his tractor and seriously injured two other civilians, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed.

A bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates exploded Saturday evening in the centre of a Shia farming village northeast of Baghdad, killing 30 people and injuring at least 34.

Three American soldiers died in separate bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

In the west of the country, US Marines said they killed 10 extremists Saturday in villages near the Syrian border, where Air Force jets blasted a suspected militant safe house the day before. US officials said an al-Qaeda official from Saudi Arabia may have been killed in the airstrike.

On Saturday night, the corpses of three handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqis were found in Baghdad, and police said an Iraqi soldier and the brother of a policeman were gunned down.

A new Pentagon report estimated that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1, 2004. In the most recent period, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 16, there were an estimated 64 Iraqi casualties each day.

A recent Associated Press count found that at least 3,870 Iraqis have died in the last six months. The AP count found that two-thirds of those killed were civilians and one-third were security personnel.