US forces launched airstrikes today in a town near the Syrian border in western Iraq, part of a three-day offensive against insurgents that has killed at least 36 militants since the fighting began, officials said.

Three car bomb attacks near a bus station and hospital in Baghdad killed at least 43 people and wounded another 89 today, in the deadliest attacks in the capital in weeks. Survivors searched through charred buses and cars for signs of friends and relatives.

A suicide attacker detonated an explosive belt today among a crowd of Iraqi army recruits in a town near the Syrian border.

Two US soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down and crashed in central Iraq, the military said today, as the government prepared to ring Baghdad with tens of thousands of security forces to curb the rampant insurgency.