A suicide truck bomb today ripped through a line of vehicles waiting at a checkpoint in Fallujah killing at least seven Iraqi civilians as the recent violence in Iraq escalated today.
A relative lull in the violence-gripped country in recent days ended with the Fallujah attack and the grim discovery in Baghdad discovered of the bodies of six men found blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the back of the head.
Also today, a powerful bomb hit a US tank in east Baghdad, setting it on fire and blowing off the tracks. It was not known if there were any casualties at the time of writing.
Further north in Tikrit a policeman died disarming a roadside bomb, when a second explosive device detonated, wounding two others.
The violence comes a day after the US military said it planned to start moving thousands of detainees out of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison to a new facility near Baghdad airport within three months.
The Iraqis today announced they would not continue using Abu Ghraib - once a symbol of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's ruthlessness - as a jail.