Car bombs hit Iraq, 15 killed

Baghdad: A series of car bombs exploded in quick succession in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding nearly 20.

Insurgents have escalated their attacks, killing more than 50 people across the country in a bid to show they were not defeated after al-Zarqawi's death.

The US troops killed seven insurgents and captured three others in a Monday raid that also left two children dead, not far from the safehouse where terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died in a US bombing raid.

The military said the insurgents belonged to a terrorist cell with ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders.

More than 200 raids have been carried out since al-Zarqawi's death on Wednesday.

Iraqi National Security Adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said troops combing though the debris found al-Zarqawi's diaries, telephone numbers, computers and a database in one computer.

"We're cautiously optimistic that we have been very successful thus far," Major General, William Caldwell, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said. "We realise this is not going to end the insurgency and that it's really going to take the people of Iraq making that decision," he added.

Caldwell also said a "high-value individual" with a $50,000 price on his head was detained. He did not name the suspect, but said he was picked up based on a tip.

The raid that killed the two children took place in Hashimiyat, a district of Hibhib, where al-Zarqawi was killed.

Residents in Hashimiyat accused American troops of targeting civilians to find insurgents.

A man held the charred body of a child whose head had been blown in half. Other Iraqis screamed "Allahu Akbar" and raised their hands despairingly as they put the charred bodies of children, a six-month-old and a four-year-old , into wooden coffins and loaded them onto trucks.

"That was an extremely unfortunate situation," Caldwell said. "Any time we're out conducting operations against terrorist elements, they mix themselves in with innocent young women and children and civilians, they in fact are asking for that possibility to occur."

The military said in a statement that three terror suspects were wounded and detained in the raid. Coalition forces seized a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, five rockets, nine AK-47 assault rifles and 20 loaded ammunition magazines.

Police were the targets of both bombings in Kirkuk on Tuesday. A parked car blew up near a downtown police patrol, followed by an apparent suicide attack outside the city's police headquarters, Brigadier General Sarhat Qadir said.

In Baghdad, bombs in parked cars killed at least 11 people and wounded 54 on Monday.

The first explosion in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite district, killed six people. A second bombing in an upscale western district killed five and wounded 13.

In Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber plowed into a gas station, killing four civilians and wounding more than 40.

A roadside bomb struck a minivan in southern Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 10. Nineteen others died in bombings, including six who were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a gas station in Balad.