Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi declared martial law on Sunday and said a US-led military offensive against the rebel-held city of Fallujah could not be delayed much longer. Insurgents have intensified violence in Iraq to show their muscle before the US offensive on Fallujah begins and police said gunmen killed 22 policemen in three attacks on Sunday.
Allawi was doing all he could to find a peaceful solution, his spokesman Thair al-Naqib said. "He still hopes that it may be possible to avoid a major military confrontation in Fallujah ... He is, however, not optimistic," Naqib said.
The Americans say they are only awaiting the word from Allawi, who returned from Europe on Saturday, to attack.
Allawi declared a 60-day state of emergency across Iraq, except the region of Kurdistan, to ensure security before elections due on January 27.
"This will send a very powerful message that we are serious," Allawi told reporters.
"We want to secure the country so elections can be done in a peaceful way and the Iraqi people can participate in the elections freely, without intimidation by terrorists and by forces who are trying to wreck the political process in Iraq."
Underlying the increasing lawlessness, a British contractor was killed in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, Britain's Ministry of Defence said. No details were available.
Giving itself power to declare emergency rule, equivalent to martial law, was one of the first things the government did after replacing the US-led administration on June 28. But this is the first time it has used the power.
Moments after the announcement, a car bomb exploded near the house of Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in central Baghdad's Karrada district, killing two people.
"I am fine. I was far away from the place where this explosion happened," Abdul Mahdi told Reuters by telephone.
Hospital staff said they had received the bodies of a policeman and a bodyguard.
Rebels killed at least 22 policemen in a series of attacks, police said. The bloodiest was on a post in Haqlaniya, 200km north-west of Baghdad, where insurgents lined nine policemen against a wall and gunned them down, witnesses said.
Police had earlier said 21 policemen were killed in one attack, but later said they died in more than one raid.
Brigadier Shaher al-Jughaifi, security chief in western Iraq, was among the dead in the Haqlaniya attack.
Insurgents also kept up a wave of attacks on US-led forces and Iraqis working for them.
An American soldier was killed and another wounded when their convoy was attacked west of Baghdad and a car bomb killed another US soldier and wounded four in western Baghdad.
A suicide bomber drove into a US convoy on the Baghdad airport road in an attack for which a militant group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility.
US troops sealed off the scene of the attack, but a US military spokesman said he had no information about it.
The bodies of three Iraqi translators for US forces were found in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, police said.
In Fallujah, residents said there was heavy fighting on the eastern and northern outskirts of the city and, for the first time, on the western edge fronting the Euphrates after intense overnight air strikes and artillery shelling.
The US military says 1,000 to 6,000 fighters, including some loyal to Zarqawi, are holed up in Fallujah.
US attacks have killed dozens of guerrillas but have failed to scare them away, a senior Marine commander said.
US troops enforced a round-the-clock curfew in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a day after bombings and attacks on police stations killed 34 people, mostly police, and wounded 49. Another policeman was shot in a separate incident in the city.
The Samarra violence erupted barely a month after US and Iraqi forces stormed the city to dislodge rebels in what was then seen as a model for assaults in Fallujah and Ramadi.
Two Turkish drivers were burned to death when rebels hit their fuel tankers with grenades near Samarra, police said.
Syria, which Washington has accused of failing to stop militants entering Iraq, has reached a border co-operation deal with Baghdad, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said.
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