Bomb Kills 14 Iraqis, 4 US Marines Gunned Down

Meanwhile, three bombs exploded early Wednesday, July 7, near the residence and offices of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, wounding six Iraqis.

At the time of the powerful explosion in Khalis, Iraqi victims were gathered in a tent to mourn the son of the town’s police director, who was killed in an earlier attack. The explosion left a meter-wide crater in the ground, Aljazeera satellite channel reported.

The governor of Baqubah and municipality members, who were attending the memorial service, narrowly escaped death as they left only half hour before the blast.

TV footage showed dismembered corpses lay on the floor as white plastic chairs where mourners had been sitting were broken and twisted.

In Al-Anbar province, meanwhile, which includes the restive towns of Falluja and Ramadi, gunmen gunned down the son of the head of the city council in Ramadi, 112 kilometres west of Baghdad.

Hussein Amer Ali Suleiman, 18, was the younger son of Sheikh Amer Ali Suleiman, the head of al-Dulaimi tribe, the biggest in Anbar.

A series of deadly blasts have claimed the lives of hundreds of Iraqis recently.

Iraqi scholars said such indiscriminate attacks are strictly prohibited in Islam, stressing in the meantime the legitimacy of the unabated resistance operations against the US-led occupation troops.

Two car bombs killed up to 40 Iraqis and wounded at least 22 others Saturday, June 26, south of Baghdad.

Two days earlier, at least 93 Iraqis were killed and over 200 others injured in a series of coordinated attacks and clashes in several Iraqi cities.

Iraqi experts accused Monday, June 28, "foreign hands" of the attacks against civilians, saying they sought to stir unrest ahead of the handover of power to Iraqis.

On Tuesday, an Iraqi group calling itself the Salvation Movement threatened to kill Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Al-Qaeda member accused in numerous attacks.

"This is the last warning. If you don’t stop, we will do to you what the occupation forces have failed to do," said a masked gunmen who appeared in a video with four other fighters aired by Al-Arabiya satellite channel.

Repudiating American claims, Fallujah resistance fighters have repeatedly denied the presence of Zarqawi in their town, adding they were simply defending their homeland against occupation forces.

Four Marines Killed

Meanwhile, four US Marines were killed Tuesday by Iraqi resistance fighters west of Baghdad.

The US military said the Marines were killed while "conducting security and stability operations" in Al-Anbar province, which includes the restive towns of Falluja and Ramadi, Reuters news agency reported.

This is the second attack on US occupation troops since the transfer of power to the interim Iraqi government.

The first occurred on June 29, killing three Marines in the Iraqi capital.

The Pentagon says 646 US servicemen have been killed in action in Iraq since the start of the war to occupy oil-rich Iraq last year.

Allawi’s HQ Bombed

On Wednesday, July 7, three bombs went off near the headquarters of Allawi.

"It took place between 9:00 am and 9:15 am (0500-0515 GMT)," police officer Saad Chanchul told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

One of the devices struck a house about 20 meters from Allawi’s political party the Iraqi National Accord and his residence, which are about 500 meters away from the heavily fortified Green Zone, Chanchul added.

Another devices exploded on the road near the residence, a second police officer said.

The explosion came two days after US occupation troops, acting on tips from Allawi, dropped two tons of bombs on the restive town of Fallujah, killing at least 13 people.

US soldiers in Humvees and Iraqi police had cordoned off the area.

About an hour after the attack, another loud explosion rocked Baghdad, an AFP reporter said. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear.