53 dead as car bombs target Iraq police

More than a dozen apparently co-ordinated car bombs targeting Iraqi police and other attacks blamed on Al Qaeda killed 53 people on Wednesday, just days before the US military ends its combat mission.

The trail of bloodshed started in the capital Baghdad before stretching to the north and south of the country, hitting 10 cities and towns in quick succession in tactics that bore the hallmark of the jihadist network.

Some 250 people were also wounded, security officials said, as a total of 14 car bombs wrought havoc for police and soldiers whose ability to protect the country is under close scrutiny as US forces have drawn down.

In the deadliest attack, a car bomb at a passport office in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, killed 20 people, including 15 police, and wounded 90 others, most of them police, Lieutenant Ali Hussein told AFP.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern suburb of Qahira, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more, security and medical officials said.

The attack in the mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood took place at around 8 am (0500 GMT), according to an interior ministry official who gave the toll. "The victims include policemen and civilians," he said.

A doctor at Medical City Hospital said they had received the bodies of two women, two children and two police officers, and that 44 other people were receiving treatment.

A spike in unrest over the past two months has triggered concern that Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle security on their own, and with no new government formed in Baghdad since a March 7 general election.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Al-Qaeda and remnants of the Baath party of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein, who he said wanted "to shake people's confidence in the security forces."

"They (the security forces) are ready to bear the responsibility after US (combat) forces withdraw at the end of August," Maliki said in a statement.

The US army announced on Tuesday that troop levels were below 50,000 in line with President Barack Obama's directives as part of a "responsible drawdown" of troops, seven years on from the invasion which ousted Saddam.

The reduction has raised fears that Qaeda-linked insurgents will step up their attacks.

A separate car bomb in Baghdad killed two police and wounded seven civilians in the city centre, while two other police were shot dead in Al-Amel, a southern district, the interior ministry official said.

In the north of the country, a car bomb in the ethnically divided, oil hub of Kirkuk killed one person and wounded 11, said Colonel Adel Zain al-Abideen, the city's acting chief of police.

In Iraq's main northern city of Mosul, a car bomb killed four civilians and gunmen killed a lieutenant colonel at a police checkpoint.

In Muqdadiya, northeast of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded as a police patrol passed, killing three civilians. When troops arrived to investigate, a second bomb exploded, wounding six soldiers.

In western Iraq, three people, two of them police, were killed and 16 wounded in two car bombs, one of them at a police checkpoint in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a security official said.

And in Fallujah, also in Anbar, two soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber who blew up a car by their checkpoint.

America now has 49,700 troops in Iraq -- less than a third of the peak figure of around 170,000 during the US military "surge" of 2007 when a brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian war cost thousands of lives.

Washington is just five days away from formally declaring its combat mission over.

Tens of thousands of US soldiers have been withdrawn in recent months and the last American unit designated as a "combat brigade" crossed into neighbouring Kuwait on August 19.

The remaining troops will be deployed on an "advise and assist" mission until all US forces leave at the end of 2011.

July was the bloodiest month in Iraq since May 2008, according to government officials, who said 535 people were killed. US military officials have disputed the figure.

In other attacks on Wednesday, a car bomb in the main southern city of Basra wounded 12 people, including four police, a security official said.

Near the central Shiite shrine city of Karbala, a car bomb wounded 29 people, including police, another security official said.

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