Iraq Suicide Blitz Kills 170 in Five Days

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Some 15 suicide bombers have struck within just over 48 hours in the capital and along the highway heading south, the latest in a string of bombings over the past five days that has killed at least 170.

Sunday began with three more suicide car bombs in the capital. One attack, at a police checkpoint in the east of the city, killed three and wounded 14. The second, at a checkpoint in the south, killed one and wounded three. The third, near the former election commission headquarters, killed three and wounded two.

Meanwhile, the death toll when a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body on Saturday, triggering a huge explosion at a gas station near a mosque south of Baghdad has risen to 98 people.

Witnesses and police said the fuel tanker was moving slowly toward the pumps when an attacker ran to it and detonated his charge. A cluster of houses near the city-center gas station caught fire, the witnesses said.

Three British soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing before dawn Saturday while on patrol in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, British officials said. At least nine Iraqi police died in other attacks across the country.

A suicide attacker detonated an explosive belt inside a police station 10 miles south of the northern city of Mosul, killing six policemen and wounding 20 others.

A suicide attacker detonated his car Saturday near an Iraqi army convoy in the town of Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, wounding at least four soldiers.

A suicide car bomber also struck an Iraqi police patrol in the Baghdad subdivision of Dora, killing three commandos and wounding five civilians.

A suicide car bomber struck near a U.S. military convoy in the southeast of Baghdad, setting a Humvee ablaze. No U.S. casualties were reported.

On Friday a bomb after sundown on a bridge over the Tigris River near the home of President Jalal Talabani, killed four security guards.