RAMADI, Iraq - Three suicide car bombers blew themselves up outside a US military base in a volatile area of Iraq near the Syrian border on Monday as US-led forces rounded up dozens of suspected insurgents in Baghdad.
The renewed violence comes as Iraq moves closer to forming its first freely elected government in half a century facing calls for the departure of US troops who invaded the country in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.
Prime minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government could be in place by the end of the week, officials said.
Pakistan meanwhile was sending a special envoy to Baghdad to try to negotiate the release of an embassy employee seized in the capital after going to a mosque for evening prayers on Saturday.
Three US marines were wounded when three suicide bombers set off their charges outside Camp Gannon, a forward operating base in the city of Qaim in western Iraq near the border with Syria, the US military said.
A local hospital said it received three wounded Iraqis from clashes that followed the attack, but the circumstances were unclear.
Qaim, where insurgents are suspected of regularly crossing into Iraq from Syria, is the site of frequent clashes between rebels and US forces. It lies about 300 kilometres (190 miles) west of Baghdad in Al-Anbar province.
"The blast was incredible," said Iraqi police Lieutenant Yasir al-Hadithi, adding that US helicopters were hovering over the scene of the attack which was followed by the sound of heavy gunfire.
Despite a massive US-led assault on the former rebel bastion of Fallujah in November, the Iraqi government has been unable to reassert control over Anbar, a stronghold of Islamic fighters and Saddam loyalists.
In Baghdad, US and Iraqi forces launched a pre-dawn raid in the southeastern Rashid district arresting 65 suspected insurgents.
"Intelligence sources confirmed that everybody who was detained today was part of a certain terrorist organisation," said Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Kent, a spokesman for the Third Infantry Division.
In other unrest, a Turkish truck driver was killed in a roadside bombing near the northern refinery town of Baiji, police said, while an Iraqi Kurdish engineer working with the US military was kidnapped in Balad north of Baghdad, his family and police said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of three Iraqis were found in nearby al-Dujail with a note stuck on them signed by the group of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the top Al-Qaeda operative in Iraq.
"We have carried out God's punishment on these collaborators that betrayed Islam," it said.
In Baquba northeast of Baghdad, about 400 university students chanted anti-US slogans and burnt an American flag at a demonstration against the US troop presence, following Saturday's massive protest in Baghdad by supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
"No, no Jews, (Prophet) Mohammed's army will return!" chanted the students.
In Islamabad, the Pakistani government said an embassy official abducted in Baghdad on Saturday was safe and that the motive of the kidnapping may be more financial than political.
"It appears to be a case of ransom, abduction for ransom, but we are not really aware of any further details, as of now," foreign office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters.
Malik Muhammad Javed was "absolutely safe" and was in regular contact with the charge d'affaires at the embassy, whom he spoke to Sunday night, Jilani said, adding that a special envoy was being sent to Baghdad.
Around 200 foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq since last April when twin Shiite-Sunni uprisings shook the country and insurgents and criminals started to use kidnapping as a political tool.
Many kidnappings are motivated by cash. Often abductors will sell captives with political value to militant groups.
Iraq's defense ministry said it had arrested a week ago a man suspected of being behind the kidnapping of two French journalists and their Syrian driver. Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were released in December after 124 days in capitivity.
On the political front, Iraq's parliament met again amid tight security to discuss internal procedures and to put some order to the often chaotic sessions.
Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawar said a government headed by prominent Shiite leader Jaafari could be in place soon.
"I predict a government by the end of the week," the Sunni Arab tribal chief told reporters after a meeting with Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the shrine city of Najaf.
"It must be a national unity government, there is no room for opposition or competition right now, at least until we steer the country to the safe harbour."
Sunnis, who largely boycotted the elections, are expected get four of the 31 ministries including defense and partisans of outgoing premier Iyad Allawi will also be represented.

04/11/2005 13:21 GMT