25 killed in violence around Iraq

Baghdad: A suicide bomber rammed a police checkpoint in northern Iraq with an explosives-laden vehicle on Saturday, killing more than a dozen people, the deadliest attack on a day when at least 25 people died in violence around the country.

More victims of Iraq's Shiite-Sunni violence were found, with seven bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad, where US and Iraqi troops have been trying for more than a month to put down sectarian killings in an intensified neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep.

One American soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, died on Friday while conducting operations near Beiji, 250 kilometers north of Baghdad, the military said on Saturday.

The suicide attack took place in Tal Afar, 420 kilometers northwest of Baghdad and about 50 kilometers from the Syrian border – a city President George W Bush praised earlier this year as an example of improving security in Iraq.

Fourteen people – including four policemen and 10 civilians – were killed when the vehicle detonated after speeding into the checkpoint, police Brig. Sabah al-Maamari said.

Some of them died when parts of nearby homes collapsed from the force of the blast. Four soldiers and nine civilians were wounded.

In the nearby city of Mosul, gunmen killed a woman who was walking with her 5-year-old son, Mosul police Col. Abdel-Karim al-Jubouri said. The boy was not harmed, he said.

The US military had predicted a spike in violence with the onset of Ramadan two weeks ago – something that the chief US military spokesman Maj. General William B Caldwell said had been borne out.

''Unfortunately, as expected, attacks have steadily increased in Baghdad during these past weeks,'' he said Wednesday, adding that the number of car bombs found and cleared were at an all-time high.

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A roadside bomb hit a fuel tanker being escorted by American troops early in the morning near Samarra, 95 kilometers north of Baghdad, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. There were no reports of casualties, the US command said.

Two bodies were fished out of the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad on Saturday, said police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid. Both had their hands and legs bound and showed signs of torture – hallmarks of the sectarian death squads that roam the Capital.

Later in the southeastern suburbs of the capital, the bodies of five more people who had been shot and handcuffed were discovered, police Cap. Mahir Hamad Mousa said.

Two workers at a Shiite-run bakery in Baghdad's Mansour district were killed by unknown gunmen in the early afternoon, said police Lt. Maitham Abdel Razzaq. The gunmen got out of their car, sprayed the bakery with bullets - also injuring a third person - and then fled in their car, he said.

The US has put increasing pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take action to stop sectarian violence amid deep divisions within his Cabinet between Shiite and Sunni parties.

Sunnis complain al-Maliki is hesitant to take tough action against Shiite militias because many of them are linked to parties he relies on.

In a joint statement, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq and General George W Casey, the top American military commander in the country, pledged to help the government find those behind Thursday's killing of a Kurdish lawmaker.

Mohammed Ridha Mahmoud and his driver were seized and killed after they left the northeast Baghdad offices of a government agency that oversees Sunni mosques in an apparent sectarian attack, which a Sunni Kurdish party blamed on Shiite militias.