Iraq: At least 28 people were killed in Baghdad overnight on Tuesday when insurgents detonated three-quarters of a tonne of explosives in a house that police were raiding, flattening neighbouring homes.
In the northern city of Mosul, US troops clashed with insurgents after a fuel truck driven by a suicide bomber exploded near an American position. There was no word on casualties. US jets screamed overhead and explosions and gunfire shook the area.
Attacks this week on police and other Iraqi security forces have left dozens dead in a sign that the Sunni insurgency, freshly endorsed by Osama bin Laden, remains potent despite US offensives intended to protect the election on January 30th.
President Bush said bin Laden's audio message underlined the importance of the election, which he said pitted the desire for democracy and freedom against the militant's "dark vision" of oppression and bloodshed. "It's very important that these elections proceed," he told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where he is on vacation.
"The task at hand is to provide as much security as possible for the election officials as well as for the people inside cities like Mosul to encourage them to express their will."
There were renewed clashes in the Sunni city of Samarra. A US assault there three months ago was meant to quell revolt before the vote, which should hand power to the Shia Muslim majority after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein.
Four men in police and National Guard uniforms were found dead in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad. One had been shot, the others beheaded in an intimidatory display of the kind typically claimed by Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose forces have linked up with Sunni nationalist Saddam loyalists.
* US troops backed by warplanes killed 25 guerrillas in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday after facing a co-ordinated assault involving two suicide bombs and dozens of insurgents, the military said.
Witnesses in Mosul said the fighting began when a suicide bomber detonated a fuel truck outside a house that has been occupied as a combat outpost by US troops since last month.
Reuters