Bombs kill four in Iraq

Bombs targeting US and Iraqi forces killed at least four people yesterday as insurgents stepped up pressure on Iraq's new leaders after a lull in violence since January elections.

A roadside bomb near the central city of Samarra killed two Iraqi soldiers, an army source said.

A car bomb intended for a US military convoy passing through Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighbourhood killed at least one person and wounded five, including an American soldier, police and the US military said.

Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq said one of its suicide bombers drove his vehicle into a convoy of American "cross worshippers" while travelling in Mansour and inflicted casualties.

"They are still gathering their dead and wounded," the group said in a statement posted on a website used by Islamists.

Elsewhere in the capital, a bomb targeting the Iraqi National Guard killed a civilian and wounded three, police said.

The attacks were small-scale by Iraq's standards, but reinforced concerns over a resurgence in the violence that has been so common over the past two years and which seemed to have subsided since the election.