(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-16 09:45

According to an AP count, at least 126 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence in Baqouba so far in 2008; the majority, 65, were killed in 10 separate bombings. At least 818 Iraqis were killed in war-related violence in the city last year, up slightly from 793 the year before.

Baqouba and Ramadi were strongholds of al-Qaida in Iraq and saw some of the fiercest fighting of the US-led war until local Sunni tribal leaders fed up with the terror network's brutal tactics joined forces with the US military against it last year.

The Sunni revolt, an influx of some 30,000 American troops and a cease-fire by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led to a decline in violence there as well as in Baghdad.

In particular, the US military has touted Ramadi as a success story. The former al-Qaida stronghold, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is the capital of Anbar province and has largely been sealed off by checkpoints.

Tuesday's bombing in Ramadi came about an hour after the Baqouba attack.

A suicide attacker on a motorcycle drove up to a kebab restaurant, went inside and detonated his explosives vest, killing at least 13 people, including three off-duty policemen and two children, and wounding 20, according to police and hospital officials.

Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 27-year-old mechanic, escaped injury because he was sitting at a back table. But he said his cousin, who owned the restaurant, was killed.

"Suddenly a motorcycle parked near the restaurant and a man came running in and then a huge explosion took place," al-Dulaimi said. "Pieces of flesh flew into the air and the roof fell over us."

The blast in central Baghdad also took place shortly after midday. A parked car bomb targeted a police patrol, killing four civilians who were passing by and wounding 15 other people, police said.

The US military condemned the bombings in Baqouba, Ramadi and Baghdad and said they appeared to have been carried out by al-Qaida in Iraq.

The fourth bombing took place in Mosul, a city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad that the US military has called the last urban stronghold for al-Qaida in Iraq.

At 3:45 pm, a double car bombing wounded three Iraqi policemen and 15 civilians, the US military said. Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Khalid Abdul-Satter said the attack killed one civilian was killed and wounded 16 others.

US-allied Sunni fighters have found themselves increasingly targeted by violence and frustrated by a perceived lack of support by the Shiite-dominated government.

The purported leader of the al-Qaida umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, called on those who switched sides to return to the insurgency. He made his statement in an Internet audiotape posted Tuesday on a militant Web site.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, whom the US has described as a fictitious character used to give an Iraqi face to the organization, urged the Sunnis to direct their arms against "the Crusaders and those who support them," using typical militant rhetoric for the United States.

While the Sunni insurgency has recently appeared to wane, the US military has increasingly pointed to Shiite militia violence as one of the greatest threats to Iraq's stability.

On Tuesday, Shiite extremists clashed again with US-Iraqi forces in Baghdad and the oil-rich southern city of Basra.

US soldiers backed by an airstrike killed six militants after a gunbattle broke out in the Sudayrah area, near Baghdad's main Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, the military said. Iraqi police in the area claimed that two boys were among those killed in the airstrike, but the military said no civilian casualties were reported.

In southern Iraq, three aides to Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, escaped assassination in separate attacks Tuesday, although two of them were seriously wounded, police said.

The attacks came four days after a top al-Sadr aide was assassinated in Najaf.

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