Four suicide bombs killed at least 71 people in Iraq yesterday, the latest attacks in an escalating campaign of guerrilla violence that has killed nearly 400 Iraqis since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago.

In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi'ite migrant laborers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work.

Police said at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded.

A policeman at the scene of the blast in Tikrit, 175 kilometers north of Baghdad, said the explosion was near a police station but the target was the crowd of workers.

"What I saw was a tragedy," said Ibrahim Mohammed, a migrant worker from the town of Kut who witnessed the blast.

"Some people had their heads torn off by the explosion, some were burned, some were ripped to pieces."

Mainly Sunni guerrillas have often targeted Shi'ites, sparking fears they are trying to stoke sectarian civil war.

In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an army recruitment center and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said.

A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. Police said the bomber was trying to reach the police station but blew up his car before reaching the building.

A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, said Interior Ministry officials.

Insurgents have launched a blitz of attacks since Iraq's political leaders announced a new cabinet on April 28.

Insurgents have also kidnapped the Iraqi governor of the rebellious western province of Anbar and are demanding that his tribe release captured fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al-Qaida network in Iraq.

Raja Nawaf, who only became governor of Anbar a few days ago, was abducted with four bodyguards on the road from the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, to the rebel stronghold of Ramadi, his brother Hamed Nawaf said.

In another development yesterday, a mortar round struck the Iraqi Oil Ministry complex in Baghdad, a police official said.

A senior oil ministry official said there were no casualties in the attack.

Guerrillas often bomb Iraq's oil pipelines as part of a campaign to topple the US-backed government. The Oil Ministry complex has been mortared several times before. 

(China Daily May 12, 2005)