Car bombs kill more than 60 north of Baghdad

Three car bombs tore through busy streets in a mixed Shi'ite and Sunni town north of Baghdad yesterday, killing more than 60 people and wounding dozens in the latest apparent sectarian attack to strike Iraq.

Hours earlier, five US soldiers were killed in one of the deadliest bombings in weeks near Ramadi, a bastion of Sunni Arab insurgency; the US commander in Iraq told senators plans to cut soldier numbers next year may be thwarted if things go awry in a Constitutional referendum and election in the coming months.

Police sources said two bombs went off about 10 minutes apart in a Shi'ite neighbourhood of Balad, about 90 km north of Baghdad, targeting a busy market and a nearby road at dusk, when streets would have been full.

A third bomb went off close by half an hour later in what looked like coordinated explosions in Balad, not far from a town where killings of Shi'ites in 1982 under Saddam Hussein are the grounds on which the former President faces trial next month.

Among the wounded in the follow-up blasts was Balad's police chief, one police source said.

Some of those injured were being brought to Baghdad for treatment as Balad's hospitals could not cope.

The attack is the latest by Sunni Arab insurgents to target the long oppressed majority Shi'ite Muslim population.

This week, five Shi'ite teachers were hauled out of a school in a town south of Baghdad and shot dead by gunmen, while last month more than 100 day labourers were killed by a suicide car bomber in the Shi'ite Kadhamiya district of Baghdad.