Child street vendors killed in blast

A BOMB exploded outside a bank in the northern city of Kirkuk yesterday, killing at least 22 people, including child street vendors and pensioners waiting for their checks.

In Baghdad, the bodies of 24 men killed in ambushes were brought to a hospital.

A suicide car bomber also rammed his vehicle into an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing five soldiers and wounding two others in Kan'an, about 48 kilometres north of Baghdad, Iraqi Army Col Ismael Ibrahim said. Two civilians were also wounded.

Two US soldiers were killed on Monday when a roadside bomb exploded next to their vehicle near the battleground city of

Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday.

At least 1,703 American soldiers have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The attack in Kirkuk was allegedly claimed in an internet posting by al-Qaida in Iraq, and it came as the Shi'ite-dominated government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari received a near overwhelming vote of confidence in the Iraqi National Assembly on a promise to help restore security to violence-torn Iraq.

Mr Al-Jaafari's 37-member government, announced on April 28, was approved by a show of hands in the 275-member parliament.

Although it has made quashing the insurgency its top priority, his government has been criticised for its seeming inability to stop a wave of attacks that have killed more than 1,000 people since its inception.

The spree of killings comes as lawmakers wrangle over how big a say Sunni Arab Muslims should have drawing up the country's new constitution. The dispute threatens to further alienate Sunni Arabs, who fell from power after their patron, Saddam Hussein, was ousted and detained. Sunni Arabs account for most of the insurgents wreaking havoc across Iraq.

Security forces captured a reported key member of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group who is accused of building and selling cars used by suicide bombers, the Iraqi government said yesterday.

He was identified as Jassim Hazan Hamadi al-Bazi, also known as Abu Ahmed, and was arrested June 7, the government said. It added that he was part of an al-Qaida cell run by a man identified as Hussayn Ibrahim.

In announcing the arrest of Mr al-Bazi, the government said he built and sold remote-controlled bombs used in roadside attacks from an electronic repair shop in Balad.

Al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremist Islamic groups have been blamed for many suicide car bombings, beheadings and attacks.

In Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, a bomb that killed 22 people exploded close to a pedestrian bridge in front of a bank. Children and other vendors selling products from sugar to kitchen utensils on both the bridge and the road underneath were among those killed.

Hussein Mohammed, a 70-year old retired employee of the Northern Oil Co, his head swathed in bandages, said: "I came here to get my wages and I brought my grandson with me who insisted on accompanying me. The bomb exploded as we queued outside the bank and we were injured and rushed to hospital." The child survived.

Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed oil-rich city where insurgents have routinely launched deadly attacks apparently seeking to foment ethnic tension.

In Baghdad, the bodies of 24 men some beheaded were brought to a hospital, morgue official Ali Chijan said. The men had been killed in recent ambushes on convoys in western Iraq.

Seventeen of the bodies, believed to be all Iraqis, were found near Khaldiyah, 121 kilometres west of Baghdad, Chijan said.

Some of the bodies had been decapitated and others had been shot in the head.