Bomb kills 20 in Basra and seven US troops die near Baghdad

IRAQ: A car bomb killed 20 people in Iraq's second city of Basra yesterday at the end of the bloodiest month for US troops in…

IRAQ: A car bomb killed 20 people in Iraq's second city of Basra yesterday at the end of the bloodiest month for US troops in Iraq since early this year.

Seven US troops were killed by bombs near Baghdad, the military said yesterday, taking October's death toll to 93, the highest in one month since January, when 107 died. The number of Americans killed in Iraq passed the 2,000 mark a week ago.

A car - apparently parked, according to police - exploded near a restaurant in Basra's bustling Algiers Street area, which was packed with festive crowds enjoying the evening cool on one of the last evenings of the holy month of Ramadan.

An Interior Ministry official said 20 people were killed and 45 wounded. Several buildings were devastated and rescue workers picked body parts from the street.

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Deep in the majority Shi'ite heartland, the Gulf coast city has been spared much of the violence Sunni Arab insurgents have inflicted further north. There has been tension among rival Shi'ite militias, however, and 16 people were killed by an evening car bomb in September.

In the far west, where US marines have been fighting for months to stem a flow of foreign Arab fighters and funds coming through Syria, local doctors and tribal leaders accused American forces of killing some 40 civilians in an air strike.

The military said it knew of no civilian deaths and believed it had killed an al-Qaeda leader targeted by precision bombing. Two roadside bombings near Baghdad yesterday killed six soldiers and the military announced a Marine had been killed by a similar device near Falluja on Sunday.

That made October, which saw Iraqis vote for a constitution and put Saddam Hussein on trial, the worst month for US forces since January, when attacks by Sunni Arab rebels surged before an election that brought Kurds and majority Shi'ites to power.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned at the weekend of a similar increase in bloodshed before another parliamentary vote in December, although officials hope a decision by Sunni leaders not to repeat their January boycott of the poll may deprive the militants of support within Saddam's once dominant minority.

President Bush, responding to concern over the rising US death toll and declining support for the Iraq campaign, said last week more sacrifices would be necessary.

Militants claiming to speak for some nationalist rebels have said they held fire around the October 15th constitutional referendum to encourage a big Sunni turnout and may do so again, despite disappointment that Sunnis narrowly failed to veto the charter.

Foreign-influenced Islamist radicals like al-Qaeda show no sign of letting up. A suicide bomber lured Shi'ites to their death with a truck laden with dates on Saturday, killing 30 in a small town north of Baghdad.

Launching one of two big Sunni-led blocs expected to figure prominently among dozens of parties on the December 15th ballot, one leader set the tone for his campaign by calling for an end to US occupation. He criticised rivals who returned from exile after Saddam's fall as beholden to Washington or religion.

"We are . . . working for the liberation of our country," Saleh al-Mutlak said, launching his Iraqi Unified Front as a secular pan-Iraqi bloc. "You won't find anyone in our group who rode into Iraq on an American tank or on a sectarian horse."

Various secular groups accuse the ruling United Alliance, led by Islamists once exiled in Tehran, of seeking to bring Iraq under the influence of fellow Shi'ites in non-Arab Iran.

The order in which parties appear on the lengthy ballot paper will be drawn by lot today.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said that, unlike in January, up to a million Iraqis living abroad may not be able to vote due to the cost and a tight schedule.

Yesterday's roadside bomb that killed four soldiers near Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad, was among the most lethal of recent weeks. US commanders have been voicing concern about increasing power and sophistication of such bombs.