A car bomb and a US airstrike led to at least 30 eaths in Iraq today.
The bomb exploded in a vegetable market in a mainly Shi'ite town south of Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding 27, police and hospital sources said.
Authorities imposed a curfew after the blast in Aziziya, 60 miles south of Baghdad, and Iraqi police reinforcements from the nearby city of Kut were dispatched.
The US military announced yesterday that a US-Iraqi security clampdown was underway in Baghdad, the epicentre of Iraq's soaring sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunni Arabs.
It also said its forces killed 13 people in an air strike on two suspected safe houses for foreign insurgents west of Baghdad today.
The operation targeted a "senior foreign fighter facilitator" northeast of the town of Ameriya, near Falluja, in an area where there is a strong presence of Sunni insurgents, the US military added.
Five suspects were detained along with a cache of armour piercing ammunition, which can be used to make roadside bombs.