American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the US military said today, as hundreds of US troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq’s most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

MILITANTS assassinated a general and a colonel and a car bomb exploded near a busy market in Baghdad yesterday, part of a wave of attacks that killed at least 21 Iraqis and wounded more than 70, authorities said.

A car bomb exploded near a busy market and cinema in eastern Baghdad today, killing at least 17 people and wounding 65, police said.

Two US Marines were killed and 14 wounded when an explosive device hit their troop transport vehicle during a large American offensive being fought against suspected insurgents in western Iraq, the military said today.

A STRING of bombings in Iraqi cities - including one by a man with explosives strapped to his body - killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 100 yesterday.

A string of bombings in Iraqi cities – including one by a man with explosives strapped to his body – killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 100 today as US troops pushed on in an offensive aimed at followers of Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist.

Using car bombs and a man with explosives strapped to his body, insurgents killed more than 60 people in three Iraqi cities today, police said.

US FORCES hunting down followers of Iraq’s most wanted terrorist pushed into a lawless region north of the Euphrates River near the Syrian border yesterday.