100 die in Iraq militants' show of strength

Insurgents mounted apparently co-ordinated bombings and shootings against police and government buildings in Baquba, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad.

With an estimated 320 people wounded, the death toll was expected to rise.

Iraqi police, entrusted to take a larger role in security after Wednesday, appeared outgunned and unable to hold positions in most of the cities under fire. United States troops raced to offer support, using aircraft, tanks and helicopters to repel the guerrillas.

The military wing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, the Tawhid and Jihad movement, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement on an Islamic website. The statement said members of the "martyrs’ battalion" had carried out a number of "blessed operations".

Most of the deaths were in Mosul, where the health ministry said 62 people were killed and 220 injured in attacks that included a string of car bombs, which rocked the Iraqi Police Academy, two police stations and the al-Jumhuri hospital.

Security forces lost control of the Sheikh Fatih police station after a car bomb attack, but US forces recaptured the station after subduing insurgents firing from a nearby mosque.

One US soldier died in the city, where the governor imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the television station urged people to stay home for the "general good".

The heaviest fighting raged in Baquba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, where two US soldiers were killed and seven were wounded.

US aircraft dropped three 500lb bombs against an insurgent position near Baquba’s football stadium.

Insurgents roamed the city with rocket launchers and automatic weapons, seized two police stations and destroyed the home of the police chief of surrounding Diyala province.

At the main hospital in Baquba, doctors struggled to deal with a steady stream of wounded. Doctors stood in pools of blood. Civilian cars, including pick-up trucks, raced to the door of the emergency ward with people suffering gunshot and shrapnel wounds.

"May God destroy America and all those who co-operate with it!" screamed one man in the corridor. Another man who drove up outside the hospital screamed "Oh God, Abbas is dead." He later carried in the body of a young man with a bullet hole in the back of his head.

The city, which has a mix of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, was almost deserted. US gunships flew low over the city, some swooping down on suspected rebel hideouts in palm groves. Some motorists flew white flags from their cars to try to ensure their safety. US tanks moved into the city centre by the afternoon.

No policemen could be seen on the streets, but targets attacked by the rebels in the early morning - including the governor’s office, police headquarters and the coalition’s local offices - were heavily guarded by Iraqi police.

In other attacks, a man dressed as an Iraqi policeman detonated a car bomb near a checkpoint manned by Iraqi and US soldiers in the southern Baghdad district of Dora, killing four Iraqi soldiers. Attackers also set off an explosion as a military convoy passed in Baghdad, injuring one soldier.

Also in Baghdad, insurgents attacked four Iraqi police stations using mortars, hand grenades and AK-47s. Police defended the stations with minimal assistance from coalition forces, a US statement said.

Fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi, in the Sunni Muslim heartland of central Iraq, killed at least nine people and wounded 27, the health ministry said.

In Fallujah, armed men ran through the streets and Iraqi police and insurgents appeared to be working together, witnesses said.

Iraq’s interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, vowed to crush the foreign Islamic militants and remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime, whom he blamed for attacks.

Mr Allawi tried to play down the assaults as the desperate acts of ragtag militants who knew their days were numbered.

"These are isolated incidents. We are going face them and we are going to defeat them and we are going to crush them," Mr Allawi said. "We have been expecting this escalation, and we are expecting more escalation in the days ahead."

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who had talks in London with Nechervan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, said: "We have long expected that there would be difficult times in the run-up to the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis.

"These attacks are targeted on those Iraqis who are working hard to build a better future for their country. They are aimed at depriving the Iraqi people of the peaceful and democratic future they deserve. They will not succeed."

Shiite militiamen loyal to the radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral ceasefire yesterday in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, their last stronghold against US troops.