Seven car bombs rock Baghdad

Insurgents set off seven car bombs, two of them at a Baghdad university, security officials said. Five people died in the coordinated attack on the Mustansiriya University that also wounded 25.

A car bomb in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Bab al-Muhaddam killed three people and wounded 25, while another in Tahrir Square in the city centre wounded 15.

Two car bombs also went off within minutes of each other in east Baghdad, wounding nine. A seventh bomb exploded in the upscale Mansur neighborhood, wounding seven.

Six people died in a series of shootings in south Baghdad's restive Al-Dura district, while one civilian was killed near the restive city of Baquba, north of the capital.

Late Sunday, police found the bodies of 15 young men near Abu Ghraib on Baghdad's western outskirts.

"All the men had bullets in their heads," an interior ministry official said.

Further north, four police and two insurgents were killed in clashes near ousted president Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, police said.

Clashes broke out when the rebels, driving in a Toyoto pick-up truck and wearing explosive belts, fired on the policemen at a checkpoint on the road between Tikrit and Tuz, an officer said.

"The bodies of the two terrorists are still lying at the site," the officer said, adding: "Nobody wants to touch them as the explosives belts are still on them."

The latest wave of violence came as US President George W. Bush stepped up pressure on Maliki to quickly form a national unity government, with the US military facing one of its bloodiest periods in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.