BAGHDAD - A spate of car bombings in Baghdad killed at least 13 Iraqis on Monday as the Australian government vowed to stand firm in the face of insurgent demands that it withdraw its forces from Iraq following the kidnapping of an Australian contractor.
A day after a suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded 50 at a Kurdish funeral in northern Iraq, bombers struck again in Baghdad, killing at least 13 and wounding 17 others, security and hospital officials said.
There has been a sharp upsurge in violence in the capital since Thursday when parliament approved the new government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.
The prime minister, whose team is expected to be officially sworn in on Tuesday, still has seven vacancies to fill, including the key defence and oil portfolios.
Of the four cars bombs that exploded around Baghdad on Monday, one targeted a convoy carrying a commander of Iraq's elite police commandos, General Rashid Flaih, who escaped unhurt.
Two policemen from his guard detail were wounded, according to hospital staff.
Fifteen minutes later, another car bomb blew up in a fashionable district of the city centre, killing nine civilians and wounding 10, an interior ministry official said.
Two policemen and two civilians also died and five people were injured when a third car bomb exploded in the eastern Zayuna district, security sources said.
In an attempt to crack down on the violence, Iraqi and US forces carried out a number of raids in the Baghdad area over the past 24 hours, arresting 84 suspected insurgents.
"Iraqi army soldiers, Iraqi police and US soldiers apprehended 84 suspected terrorists in 19 different combat operations conducted in and around Baghdad over the last 24 hours," US forces said in a statement.
In other developments, a British soldier died from injuries sustained in "hostile action" in Iraq, bringing to 87 the number of British military personnel killed in Iraq since the US and British invasion of March 2003 that ended Saddam Hussein's regime, according to the Ministry of Defence in London.
Elsewhere in Iraq, four people were hurt, including a soldier and a policeman, when a suicide bomber drove a car at an Iraqi army convoy in Tarmya, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of the capital.
A policeman was shot dead in Khalis, further north, security sources said.
Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and four injured in a bomb explosion Monday some 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraqi army captain Assad Sadad said.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government would send an emergency team to Iraq to seek the release of kidnapped engineer Douglas Wood, 63.
But Howard, whose country has about 550 troops in Iraq and is deploying 350 more, said foreign policy could not be "dictated by terrorists" and he rejected the kidnappers' demand for a withdrawal of the troops.
"The Australian government, along with other governments, remains determined that we will see through the process of bringing democracy and peace and freedom to Iraq," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
The kidnapping was disclosed late Sunday when Wood's captors released a videotape showing him pleading for his life.
"Please help me. I don't want to die," said Wood in the video, sitting on a floor sandwiched between two masked men armed with assault rifles.
Downer said it was not known where and when Wood had been seized, but the release of the video coincided with a visit to Baghdad by Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill.
Wood has lived in the United States since 1992 and is married to an American. He was working on construction projects in Iraq when he was seized.
The videotape bore the words Shura Council of the Mujahedeen of Iraq. The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on US soldiers and Iraqi forces, as well as the kidnapping of a Turk who was freed in September.
More than 25 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent months.
Romania's President Traian Basescu said Monday he was "certain" that three Romanian journalists held hostage in Iraq were alive.
Authorities were doing everything possible to bring the three, who were seized on March 28, home "safe and sound", he told reporters.
The kidnappers had set a deadline of last Wednesday for Bucharest to announce the withdrawal of its 860 troops from Iraq to save the journalists' lives, in a video shown on an Arab news channel.
Iraqi security officials said Sunday they had arrested five suspects in connection with the kidnapping last year of British aid worker Margaret Hassan, who is believed to have been murdered.
The five, detained on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, "confessed to taking part in the kidnapping and death of Margaret Hassan," an interior ministry official said.
The arrests followed a raid in the Jaara area, south of the capital, where security forces found a bag, documents and clothes belonging to Hassan.
British embassy officials said only three suspects were being questioned in connection with the case.

05/02/2005 13:05 GMT