73 killed in Iraq

At least 73 people were killed on Tuesday in a Baghdad car bombing and in an ambush on police in Baquba, claimed by al Qaeda-linked militants, as fighting flared between US troops and insurgents in Ramadi. Fifty people perished in Baghdad, 47 of them when a vehicle packed with explosives blew up outside the main police headquarters.
More than 100 people were wounded in the bombing, the most lethal in the country for two months.
Shrapnel tore the crowded district, littering body parts everywhere and leaving pools of congealed blood on the pavement.
"More than 200 people were queuing outside the main gate. I came with six friends and now I'm alone. They've gone, all of them," said aspiring police recruit Nabeel Mohammed, slightly wounded in the blast.
Anguished relatives, seeking news of loved ones, frantically turned over ID cards or inspected dozens of pairs of shoes lined up on the roadside by police near the crater gouged in the ground by the blast.
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib blamed the bombing on "Arab groups" as angry men cursed US President George W. Bush.
Further north in the Sunni Muslim hot spot of Baquba, 13 people died in an ambush, all but one of them a policemen.
Late Tuesday, a series of loud explosions, thought to be from rockets, struck the interim government and US embassy enclave in Baghdad, a US officer said.
The violence washing over Iraq has spiked in the past two weeks, amid a wave of attacks on Sunday also claimed by militants loyal to al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi and US assaults on Fallujah and Tall Afar.
Six coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq over the past 24 hours - three Poles and three Americans - bringing the US death toll in Iraq to more than 1,012, according to the Pentagon.
The latest bombing came two days after bitter clashes between US troops and insurgents killed 13 people in the same Haifa Street area, considered a bastion of Saddam Hussein loyalists.
Using an Islamist website, the military wing of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group purportedly claimed to have orchestrated what it called a suicide bombing in Baghdad and the Baquba gun attack.
"Heroes of the Tawhid wal Jihad are striking with an iron hand anyone who betrays religion and honour," said one of two statements, whose authenticity were impossible to confirm.
US forces have relentlessly pounded alleged Zarqawi safehouses in the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah, but on Tuesday lifted their siege on the northern town of Tall Afar, a suspected staging post for foreign fighters.
Only a few locals ventured inside to retrieve their belongings, fearing a fresh outbreak of unrest, and Nineveh's provincial governor nominated an interim mayor for the town until a permanent appointment can be made.
The assault on Tall Afar had triggered warnings from key ally Turkey that it would halt all co-operation in Iraq if the town continued to be a target.
Out west, 10 people were killed and 22 wounded in clashes between US troops and insurgents in the Sunni hotspot of Ramadi, where the sound of gunfire echoed from the city centre, the health ministry said.
In the north, insurgents sabotaged a key pipeline, halting oil exports to Turkey, while a second act of sabotage slashed power in Kirkuk and Baiji. In Vienna, Iraqi Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban had said Iraq was producing more than 2.5 million barrels of oil per day and exporting two million.
A vital northern fuel export artery was attacked 60 kilometres west of Kirkuk after dawn, once again halting exports to Turkey, an oil official said on condition of anonymity.
Separately the US military reported a fire along a pipeline near the oil refinery town of Baiji, south-west of Kirkuk, early Tuesday. The attack forced the Baiji power plant to shut down, affecting power in both Baiji and Kirkuk.
On a European tour to drum up support for his country, President Ghazi al-Yawar pressed NATO and the EU to do more to help stabilise his war-ravaged country ahead of elections which he hopes can be held as planned in January.
But Iraq's seemingly never-ending foreign hostage crisis continued apace, as militants claimed the two separate kidnappings of a Jordanian and two Turkish truck drivers.
A group calling itself "Squads of Unification Lions" abducted the Jordanian and threatened to kill him unless his employer pulls out of Iraq within 48 hours, in a video aired on Al-Jazeera television.
For its part, Canberra has vowed never to bow to terrorists amid claims that Iraqi militants have kidnapped two Australians and will execute them unless it withdraws its troops from Iraq.
And faced with its own Iraq hostage crisis, Italy has sent Foreign Minister Franco Frattini to Qatar, hot on the heels of talks in the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to win the release of two Italian women kidnapped in Baghdad.