SIX car bombs targeted US and Iraqi troops across Baghdad yesterday, killing as many as 20 people, and the military said two US Marines died the day before in a roadside bombing near the Jordanian border.

US troops killed 10 insurgents in an ethnically-mixed city north of Baghdad, while 10 Iraqi troops died in two separate attacks north-east of the capital in a surge of violence following a relative lull last week.

A suicide car bomb killed an Iraqi Shiite politician and three others near Baghdad as they were heading to parliament today, an attack likely to further fuel tensions between the minority Sunni Arabs and the country’s Shiite majority.

More than 1,000 US troops and Iraqi forces launched Operation Sword today in a bid to crush insurgents and foreign fighters in western Iraq, making it the third major offensive in the area in recent weeks.

FIVE US Marines have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in western Iraq.

Five US Marines have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in western Iraq, the military said today.