Bombers kill more than 30 in Iraq amid sectarian bloodshed

Three bombs went off in quick succession in Shiite areas of Baghdad, killing at least 33 people and wounding more than 100, a security official and medics said.

Twenty-three of them died when a suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives blew himself up next to a queue of people waiting to buy kerosene in Al-Amin, southeast Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.

Another six people were killed in a car bomb attack near a market in the central Karada district and another car-bombing close to a post office in the southeastern district of Baghdad Jadida claimed four lives, the sources said.

A spokesman at Al-Kindi hospital said 109 people had been admitted with injuries after the three bombings.

The coordinated attacks came a day after authorities lifted a curfew and a vehicle ban in the capital.

Earlier Tuesday, gunmen planted a bomb at the entrance of the Sunni Al-Hurriya mosque, in the northern Al-Hurriya neighbourhood of the capital.

The latest flareup of violence follows several days of sectarian bloodshed triggered by the bombing last Wednesday of a Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra.

Some 330 people have died in Baghdad since the bombing of the Samarra shrine, an official with the capital's main morgue told AFP before Tuesday's bomb attacks.

Earlier Tuesday the tomb of Hussein al-Majid, father of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, was bombed in the northern town of Tikrit.

That attack came just hours before the trial reopened of Saddam and seven former cohorts on charges of crimes against humanity.

In southern Iraq, two British soldiers were killed on Tuesday in an attack in southern Iraq, the defence ministry in London told AFP. A third soldier in the US-led multinational force was injured in the incident in Amarra.

Iraqi police said a roadside bomb targeted a British patrol on the outskirts of the southern city.

As sustained attacks continued Iraqi military tanks were seen guarding some Sunni mosques in Baghdad amid reports they were being targeted by Shiite militiamen.

The ongoing violence since the Samarra shrine bombing has also left 10 Palestinians dead in Baghdad, the head of the Palestinian mission in Iraq told AFP.

Dalil al-Kasus said he had called on all Iraqi leaders to protect the Palestinians.

"The Palestinians have been guests of Iraq since 1948 and have never intervened in the internal affairs of the country but followed the political choice of Iraqis," Kasus said.

"I urge all our Iraqi brothers to stop these barbaric attacks against our people," he added.

The latest bloodshed came as Iraqi authorities lifted a daytime curfew in Baghdad on Monday and positioned tanks in certain regions of Baghdad as they sought to defuse the crisis that had pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, the defence ministry's chief of operations, Monday announced tank deployments in parts of Baghdad, and warned that soldiers were now ordered to arrest anyone carrying weapons illegally.

The move appeared to be aimed at cracking down on Shiite mobs suspected of targeting Sunnis.

It was unclear whether the latest violence would strain efforts to lure Sunni parties back into talks on forming a new government after they bolted negotiations last Thursday in anger over the attacks on their community.

Sunni participation in government is seen as crucial to ending the community's insurgency, which has plunged Iraq into chaos since US forces toppled Saddam's regime in 2003.

The main Sunni political bloc, the National Concord Front, has indicated it would return to talks on a new government only if Sunni religious sanctuaries that it claimed were seized by Shiite militias were returned to them.

Iraq's national security adviser Muwaffak al-Rubaie said 10 people, including four security guards, were arrested in connection with the bombing of Samarra's golden-domed shrine.

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