RAMADI, Iraq, Nov 7 (AFP) - Gunmen rounded up and killed 21 policemen and two US soldiers died in separate attacks in Iraq Sunday, one day after car bombs and clashes killed 36 people in the restive Sunni heartland.
The renewed violence against symbols of Iraq's US-backed government came as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi looked set to mount an offensive on rebel-held Fallujah, in Al-Anbar province, where the police massacre occured.
Dozens of gunmen, some 200 according to one estimate, ambushed the main police station in Haditha and another smaller station in the nearby village of Haqlaniya, said local police.
"The attackers disarmed the police, gathered them together and then shot them dead," he said of the raid in Haditha, a town 200 kilometres (120 miles) west of Baghdad.
A similar execution-style massacre took place at dawn in Haqlaniya, he said, adding that the combined death toll was 21.
Policemen found their murdered colleagues with their hands tied behind their backs, while the gunmen escaped with weapons and vehicles.
Seen as collaborating with the US-led military, Iraq's fledgling security forces are a top target in an insurgency that has raged in the aftermath of last year's invasion. They are much easier to hit than their American counterparts.
A curfew imposed during a barrage of bloody attacks on police stations and public buildings in the Sunni Muslim bastion of Samarra on Saturday remained in place as US troops conducted search operations, local police said.
An Iraqi police spokesman said US troops told residents to stay at home or risk being shot, leaving the dead unburied in the hospital morgue, while public buildings remained shuttered.
Thirty-six people, a mix of Iraqi police, soldiers and civilians, were killed in four car bombs and clashes that were claimed by the Al-Qaeda-linked group of Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The attack further undermined efforts by the US-backed interim government to restore peace to the country in time for elections planned for January.
The police were at the eye of the storm in another attack two weeks ago near Haditha, when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a police academy in the town of Baghdadi killing 19 policemen.
On the same day, 49 Iraqi army recruits were gunned down as they headed home in minibuses from western Iraq after completing a training course in an attack that sparked suspicions that the perpetrators received inside help.
Militants also strike anyone suspected of ties to US-led forces.
In other developments Sunday, a suicide car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad house of Iraq's interim finance minister Adel Abdul Mehdi, killing one of his guards, an aide to the minister told AFP.
US soldiers dispatched to the scene of the blast came under small arms fire wounding one soldier, said a military statement.
West of Baghdad, two US soldiers were killed and five were wounded in two separate car bomb attacks on their convoys, the US military said.
The first attack, west of Baghdad at about 11:00 am (0800 GMT), killed one 81st Brigade Combat Team soldier and wounded another.
Two hours later another car bomb exploded in the path of a convoy, killing one US soldier and injuring four others.
The latest deaths bring to 1,124 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
Also in Baghdad, three Iraqi drivers were wounded when gunmen attacked a police car off the tense Haifa street area on the western side of the city, doctors said.
Four Iraqis working for the US military were found shot dead near Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a police spokesman told AFP Sunday, while two truck drivers, an Iraqi and a Turk, were found killed north of Baghdad.
In Baquba, gunmen killed a former intelligence officer from the previous regime, Abdul Satar Al-Luhaibi, on Saturday night, according to police.
11/07/2004 17:39 GMT - AFP