BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 28 people have been killed in Baghdad overnight after insurgents blew up a house that police were raiding, flattening neighbouring homes.
The police were lured into a trap, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. But neighbours said officers responded to a genuine call.
Six policemen were among the 28 dead and four officers were missing, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. Witnesses saw at least one more dead woman dug from the rubble of at least three houses turned into a wasteland of rubble by the massive blast.
Attacks this week on police and other Iraqi security forces have left dozens dead in a sign the Sunni insurgency, freshly endorsed by Osama bin Laden, remains a potent force despite U.S. offensives intended to protect next month's Iraqi elections.
There were renewed clashes in the Sunni city of Samarra. A U.S. assault there three months ago was meant to quell revolt before the January 30 vote, which should hand power to the Shi'ite Muslim majority after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein.
In Mosul, U.S. jets screamed low overhead during sustained gunfire and explosions in the west of Iraq's third city. U.S. troops are hunting suspects after a suicide bomber killed 21 people, mostly Americans, in a U.S. army mess tent a week ago.
Four men in uniforms of the police and National Guard were found dead in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad. One had been shot, the others beheaded in an intimidatory display of the kind typically claimed by the likes of Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who have allied with Sunni nationalist Saddam loyalists.
POLICE TRAP?
A further 21 people were wounded in the Baghdad blast, late on Tuesday in the capital's western Ghazaliya district. Police had responded to a call from a neighbour, the ministry spokesman said: "When the police arrived and went in, the house blew up.
"It seems to have been a trap."
However, it was not clear that police had been deliberately lured to the house. Neighbours said it was they who called them after becoming suspicious of a dark-skinned man in the house, which they said had been rented this week and filled with boxes.
"The house was turned into a bomb," a police officer said.
Some three quarters of a tonne (1,700-1,800 pounds) of explosive may have gone off, the U.S. military said.
Three houses were entirely destroyed, razed to piles of bricks and rubble, while half a dozen others were damaged. Entire families were wiped out, said neighbours who believed foreign fighters have rented the house raided by police.
"I saw unexploded artillery shells with red wires taken out of the rubble," said neighbour Mohammed Ali, 35, a taxi driver, who said he saw police storm the house moments before the blast.
STRING OF ATTACKS
Earlier on Tuesday, about two dozen police and Iraqi National Guards were killed in attacks in the Sunni north.
In the bloodiest, insurgents overran a police post near Saddam's home town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad. They shot 12 officers execution-style, then blew up the station.
It was a dramatic show of force, a day after bin Laden publicly endorsed Zarqawi as al Qaeda's leader in Iraq for the first time. Bin Laden declared holy war on U.S. and Iraqi forces trying to secure the election.
In the latest violence directed at the election process, gunmen fired on an election office near Kirkuk overnight.
Insurgents clashed with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the centre of Samarra again on Wednesday, witnesses said.
U.S. helicopters circled above and the sound of gunfire could be heard. Shops were shut and the area was deserted.
An American military spokesman said two U.S. patrols came under fire, adding there were no U.S. casualties. A roadside bomb had wounded a U.S. soldier and five Iraqi police commandos near Samarra late on Tuesday, he added.
A National Guardsman was killed near Samarra, at Siniya, where more than 100 Guards walked out after their commander was killed in a car bombing along with several Guards this month.
The timing of the various attacks and broadcast of the al Qaeda leader's tape seemed coincidental but together they racked up the pressure on Iraqi voters to stay at home on January 30 and seemed aimed to instil fear in Iraq's new security forces.
Both have grave implications for U.S. prospects in Iraq.
Bin Laden's call for a boycott of the election and his endorsement of Zarqawi will find few willing supporters in Iraq. But the threat of being killed will put many off voting anyway.
The chances have risen that an assembly will be elected that gives Shi'ites an exaggerated majority, and so finds little legitimacy among Sunnis. That will upset Washington's hopes for a representative government that can handle its own security.
Security may also have to remain in U.S. hands if Iraqi forces succumb to the relentless intimidation of the insurgents.
