IRAQ:A MINIMUM OF 48 people were killed in a day of violence in Iraq yesterday. In the worst incident, 15 Iraqi soldiers died in a suicide bomb attack in Mosul.
Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" came under repeated rocket or mortar attack, and police said up to eight people had been killed by rockets falling short outside the government and diplomatic compound.
The attacks were part of a wider increase in violence in the capital and in the northern city of Mosul, underlining warnings by US military commanders that recent security gains in Iraq are both fragile and reversible.
In the past, the US military has blamed such attacks on the Green Zone on rogue elements of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
Sadr has imposed a ceasefire on the militia, but there have been signs that it is fraying.
In Mosul, a suicide truck bomber killed 15 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 45 people, including civilians, in an attack on an Iraqi army base, the Interior Ministry said. US commanders describe Mosul as al-Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq.
Much of yesterday's violence took place in Baghdad, the centre of sectarian bloodletting between Iraq's majority Shias and minority Sunni Muslims in 2006 and 2007 in which tens of thousands died. A security crackdown by US and Iraqi forces has since sharply reduced levels of violence.
Gunmen in three cars opened fire on pedestrians in the religiously mixed southern district of Zaafariniya, killing at least seven and wounding 16, police said.
Blood and bullet casings littered the street in front of a clinic, market and a housing compound.
"I heard that my brother was killed. I just want to know how the terrorists got through all the checkpoints to reach here," said Zaafaraniya resident Abu Mohammed.
In northwestern Baghdad's Shula district, a predominantly Shia neighbourhood, a suicide car bomber killed six people waiting in a petrol queue, police said.
The US-protected Green Zone in central Baghdad was hit by at least three separate barrages in the morning and after nightfall.
The Green Zone was often hit by rockets and mortars at the height of sectarian violence a year ago, but attacks have become rarer as security has improved across Iraq.
Baghdad police said eight people were killed when Katyusha rockets, either randomly aimed or which misfired, hit two Baghdad neighbourhoods during the attack on the Green Zone. Interior Ministry sources said five were killed.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion is likely to fall on Sadr's Mahdi Army, which last week clashed with Iraqi and US forces in the southern city of Kut and southern Baghdad.
The US military meanwhile said it killed 12 insurgents in a raid on a house east of Baquba in volatile Diyala province.