Car bombs, clashes kill 33 in Iraqi city, as war clouds gather over Fallujah

SAMARRA, Iraq, Nov 6 (AFP) - At least 33 Iraqis died in car bomb attacks and clashes in a restive town north of Baghdad on Saturday, undermining efforts to crush Iraq's insurgency as US troops geared up for a possible assault on Fallujah.
Twenty US soldiers were also wounded in action in Ramadi, another Sunni Muslim stronghold down the road from Fallujah, a rebel hub west of the Iraqi capital.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has told insurgents in Fallujah that time is running out for them as thousands of US and Iraqi troops prepare for action.
Out-gunned but determined to fight on, rebels unleashed a double car bomb attack outside a local government building in Samarra, police and medics said.
That was followed by another in front of a teachers' college in the city, while a fourth then exploded in the south of Samarra, with the final blast killing 10.
Gunmen also attacked three police stations and clashed with US and Iraqi troops in the city, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.
"We have received 33 killed and 48 wounded," said Doctor Nawfal Mohammed at Samarra's general hospital.
The dead, a mix of Iraqi police, soldiers and civilians, included Brigadier General Abdul Razak Mohammed al-Jarmani, a local police chief.
For its part, the US military in the area said a US-Iraqi patrol found a stolen police truck laden with explosives in Samarra at about 9:30 am and destroyed it, but one Iraqi soldier and four civilians were wounded.
The mayor imposed a curfew in the city from 2:00 p.m, a military statement said, adding that no US soldiers had been injured in the mayhem.
US and Iraqi troops stormed Samarra, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad, at the start of October to wrest control of the city from rebels.
The battle marked the first major offensive to reclaim a Sunni flashpoint ahead of national elections in January, but a US military commander admitted after the brief operation that many rebel leaders simply went to ground.
Eager to stamp out pockets of resistance ahead of the elections, US and Iraqi troops prepared for an anticipated double-pronged assault on Iraq's rebel nerve centres of Fallujah and Ramadi.
Twenty US troops, however, were wounded in action while "conducting increased security operations" in Ramadi, a US military spokesman said, without giving further details.
Inhabitants of the city, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, said a suicide car bomb exploded outside a US military base on a main road just outside Ramadi, leaving the lifeless bodies of Iraqis caught in the attack scattered on the road.
The bloodshed followed a night of air raids over Fallujah and Ramadi, while earlier in the morning artillery fire erupted in Fallujah after several mortar shells fell on Camp Fallujah, without inflicting any injuries, said an AFP photographer who is embedded with the US marines.
"It cannot continue like this. We have got to go inside one day or another, but it has to finish," said a chief engineer with the marines.
Many of the city's 300,000 inhabitants have already fled to makeshift camps to the west or sought refuge in Baghdad, and US planes have been dropping leaflets urging those remaining to leave.
By Saturday, US troops had blocked all routes into the city, only permitting families to leave, residents said. Police in Ramadi, meanwhile, said US forces had blocked access to that city as well.
A newly-built hospital, which was about to be inaugurated, was destroyed by two missiles in Fallujah, its director said.
A delegation from the interim parliament has attempted to find a peaceful solution to the crisis by talking to leaders from Fallujah, but hopes of a breakthrough are fading fast.
Allawi has insisted that the city deliver foreign fighters, including Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his followers, who are thought to use it as a base, or allow Iraqi forces to go in and do the job.
Fallujah civil leaders have consistently denied that Zarqawi is in the city.
Allawi also wants all rebels to lay down their heavy and medium weapons.
The ominous military activity flared as news broke that the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had written to the United States, Britain and Iraq to warn them that an assault on Fallujah could undermine the elections.
Divisions over the polls are already appearing between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
The majority Shiites, who were deprived of power under Saddam Hussein, support the landmark elections, but many Sunnis, who were dominant under the former leader, have threatened a boycott if the Fallujah offensive is carried out.
In simmering unrest, a Turkish truck driver was killed and two fuel trucks destroyed when a convoy guarded by the US military was ambushed in northern Iraq.
Back in Baghdad, three US soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded along the main road to the airport, the military said.
Two mortar rounds were also fired on Iraq's interior ministry building, slightly wounding two people, local officials said.
And 12 Iraqi National Guard members were abducted and killed Thursday in a trouble spot south of Baghdad, an aide to a powerful Shiite imam said.

11/06/2004 15:09 GMT - AFP