Iraq: A suicide bomber struck a Shia mosque during a funeral in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least 46 people and wounding more than 100 in a fresh attack against Iraq's newly empowered majority.
Police sources in Baghdad said 46 people were killed in the attack in eastern Mosul, a city that has become a focus for US efforts to defeat Iraq's insurgency.
Mainly Sunni Arab insurgents have staged increasingly audacious attacks on Shia and official targets in their relentless campaign to topple the US-backed government and stall efforts by the Shia majority to form a new cabinet.
In Baghdad, insurgents posing as policemen killed a police chief, stopping his truck at a fake checkpoint, asking his name and then shooting him, in an attack claimed by al-Qaeda followers.
Later police found the bodies of four Iraqi soldiers shot dead and dumped by insurgents in the west of the country, adding to two grim discoveries of 41 bodies, some shot and others beheaded, in the Sunni heartland earlier this week.
The interim government has set up a police force, army and security service, often trained by foreign instructors. But many say insurgents can easily penetrate their ranks.
Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, with a mixed population of mostly Sunni Arabs and Kurds, has seen a surge in violence since last November, when co-ordinated guerrilla attacks on police forced them to desert.
Tensions have risen in Iraq's north between the three main groups that populate the area, the Shias, the Kurds and the Sunnis.
The Kurds, who want to extend an autonomous region in the north, dominate the area and have encouraged those who fled under Saddam to return home.
In Kirkuk, newly returned Kurds trying to reclaim land clashed with Iraqi police. Two national guards were wounded.
In the capital, insurgents targeted police. Lieut Col Ahmed Obeis, travelling to work at Salhiya police station in central Baghdad, was shot dead along with two other policemen while one guerrilla filmed the attack.
"On March 10th an al-Qaeda team set up a checkpoint in the Ilam district and lay in wait for an officer in the interior ministry intelligence branch who used to investigate and harm mujahideen," al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an internet statement.
"When he pulled out his identity papers the mujahideen riddled him with bullets, killing him." In southeastern Baghdad, another policeman was shot dead by gunmen on his way to work.
In Rutba on the highway to Jordan in western Iraq, the bodies of four Iraqi soldiers were found, hospital sources said. They had been shot around five days ago.
Guerrillas target those working for the interim government, US forces or construction companies helping to rebuild Iraq. They have often impersonated police to carry out attacks.
On Wednesday insurgents dressed as police detonated a suicide truck bomb outside a Baghdad hotel used by foreign contractors, killing at least two people and wounding at least 40.
"It is just a matter of paying money and anyone can infiltrate the police force," a police official said. The insurgents' ranks have been boosted by frustration at the US occupation, shootings of Iraqi civilians by troops and foreign contractors, and by abuse of prisoners in US-run jails.