DUBAI (AFP) - The Al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for an attack on US soldiers in Iraq after taking credit for a string of operations which killed more than 35 people, in statements posted on the Internet.
The statements, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, were posted on an Islamist website as 21 Iraqi policemen were killed in ongoing violence.
The Iraqi government declared a 60-day state of emergency across most of the country amid expectations of an imminent assault by US and Iraqi troops on the rebel hub of Fallujah to flush out fighters, including Zarqawi loyalists.
"A lion from the martyrdom-seeking brigade (suicide bombers) rammed into a US convoy on the Baghdad airport road" Sunday, said a statement signed by "Al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers (Iraq)."
The US military said one US soldier was killed and another wounded when their convoy was attacked west of Baghdad.
But a military spokeswoman could not confirm whether it was the same attack, reported earlier by witnesses, on a US convoy near a checkpoint on the road to Baghdad international airport, which lies southwest of the capital.
In the statements claiming Saturday`s operations, the group said the "lions" attacked US military convoys in Baghdad and Ramadi, as well as "dens of evil" in Samarra.
"On this blessed day, a lion from the martyrdom-seeking brigade plunged into an American convoy in the town of Ramadi," one of the statements said.
A US military spokesman said 20 US troops were wounded in action while "conducting increased security operations" in Ramadi on Saturday, but did not give details.
Inhabitants of the city, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad, said a suicide car bomb exploded outside a US military base on a main road just outside Ramadi, leaving lifeless bodies of Iraqis caught in the attack on the road.
Another statement by Zarqawi`s group, which regularly takes credit for deadly attacks and the abduction and beheading of foreign hostages, said four suicide bombers had "struck the dens of evil in Samarra" and clashed with US forces and Iraqi "apostates" working with them.
Several US soldiers and Iraqi policemen were killed, it said.
Rebels unleashed a double car bomb attack outside a local government building in Samarra, 125 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad, police and medics said.
That was followed by another car bomb in front of a teachers` college, while a fourth exploded in the south of Samarra, a Sunni Muslim bastion that was wrested from rebel control in a major US-Iraqi offensive at the start of October.
Gunmen also attacked three police stations and clashed with US and Iraqi troops, Iraqi officials said. The bombings and clashes left 36 people dead and scores injured.
Another claim attributed to the Zarqawi group said two suicide bombers attacked US convoys Saturday on the road to Baghdad airport and in Radwaniya, on the road to Fallujah.
The US military said an Iraqi was killed and four other people, including three US soldiers, were wounded when a car bomb blew up near a military convoy on the main airport road.
The claims of responsibility came as 21 Iraqi policemen were shot dead by gunmen who stormed two police stations Sunday in the restive Sunni province of Al-Anbar, where Fallujah and Ramadi are located, according to police.