IRAQ: A suicide bomber exploded a car in the middle of a funeral gathering in an Iraqi town north of Baghdad yesterday, killing six people and wounding 35.
The blast in Khalis, 80 km from Baghdad, was the bloodiest guerrilla attack in Iraq since an interim government took charge from US-led occupiers on June 28th. A senior police commander was among those wounded in the attack on the funeral for the brother of the town's mayor, police said. Tents had been erected in the street to shelter mourners paying condolences to the man's family.
"A suicide bomber drove right into the funeral gathering and his car exploded," said witness Ghassan Sabah Kadhem.
The bombing shattered a relative lull in guerrilla attacks since Washington's handover to the interim government and occurred a day after US warplanes bombed a suspected militant target in Falluja, killing 13 people and wounding seven.
The government of the Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, said it would unveil a new security law today for wider powers to combat guerrillas, an announcement which has been delayed several times.
The Foreign Minister, Mr Hoshiyar Zebari, said on Monday the law would empower the government to impose curfews, set up checkpoints and search and detain suspects. The measures would be temporary and would apply only in parts of Iraq.
Meanwhile, kidnappers in Iraq have released a Lebanese-born US marine whom they were earlier believed to have decapitated, according to the hostage's brother.
Wassef Ali Hassoun's brother Sami, speaking from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, yesterday said his family had received word Hassoun was alive and had been freed in the early hours.
The US military in Baghdad could not immediately confirm that Hassoun, missing since June 21st, had been released.
Conflicting statements on Internet sites have sown confusion about Hassoun's fate in the last few days. One Islamist group denied a claim put out in its name that he had been beheaded.
The Islamic Response Movement said late on Monday he had been moved to "safety" after pledging to leave the military.
Mr Allawi said Iraqi intelligence work had led to the US air strike on Monday on a house in Falluja, west of Baghdad, which he said was used by a group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused by Washington of links to al-Qaeda.
"The people of Iraq will not tolerate terrorist groups or those who collaborate with any other foreign fighters such as the Zarqawi network to continue their wicked ways," he said.
Mr Allawi wants to enlist Iraqi opinion against Zarqawi, but openly supporting US air strikes is risky. Many Iraqis are angered by Zarqawi's tactics, but few are convinced US raids kill only foreign militants, rather than Iraqi civilians.
US patrols came under fire in Falluja and Ramadi, another Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad, witnesses said. The US military had no word on those attacks, but it said three marines were killed in action in western Iraq on Monday.
The deaths brought the number of US soldiers killed in combat to more than 640 since the start of last year's war to oust Saddam.
Joining a battle of words on the Internet and Arabic satellite TV channels, Iraqi gunmen calling themselves the Salvation Movement vowed to hunt Zarqawi because he "is not a son of this country and has killed thousands of its people".
"We will track him down wherever he is and arrest him and his followers or kill them," one of four masked men said in a video aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television.
There was no way to verify the existence of the previously unknown group.