Rebel attacks kill 17 Iraqi security men

Insurgents killed 17 Iraqi police and National Guards yesterday in a string of bloody ambushes, bombings and suicide attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq's January 30 national election.

Two explosions rocked Baghdad, one of them detonated by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver who killed two policemen and a civilian near interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party headquarters.

The other deadly attacks were centred in the restive Sunni heartland north of the capital, raising further questions among Iraqis on how the country's fledgling security forces will be able to protect voters if they can hardly protect themselves.

In west Baghdad, an explosives-laden car tried to ram through a checkpoint on a road leading to Mr Allawi's party offices but hit a police pick-up truck and blew up, setting nearby vehicles ablaze and sending up plumes of black smoke.

The Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna, which last week mounted the deadliest suicide attack on Americans since the start of the war with an attack on a US base in Mosul, claimed responsibility for the bombing.

"One of the lions of Islam launched a heroic martyrdom operation on a huge congregation of agent policemen protecting the party headquarters of the apostate Iyad Allawi," the group said in a statement posted on its website.

The blast, which also wounded 25 people, came a day after insurgents exposed the vulnerability of Iraq's security services with a suicide bombing that killed 25 National Guards.

The attacks were the latest in a campaign by Sunni rebels trying to drive out US-led forces, cripple the American-backed government and scare voters away from the polls. Iraqi leaders say the insurgents also want to provoke sectarian civil war.

The Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, behind most of the attacks since the US-led invasion in 2003, has vowed to "slaughter" Iraqis it brands collaborators with foreign occupiers.

Osama bin Laden and Islamist groups have pledged to wreck the vote as part of a holy war.

Yesterday's first explosion in Baghdad hit a roadblock about a kilometre from the main offices of Mr Allawi's Iraqi National Accord bloc just minutes before the party had been due to hold a news conference to announce its slate of candidates.