A suicide car bomber detonated his device outside a Shi'ite mosque north of Baghdad on Friday, killing 11 and wounding 21, in the latest attack in a three-day orgy of violence that has killed more than 200 people.

Iraqi police captain Saed Ahmed said the bomber blew himself up outside the Great Prophet mosque in Tuz Khurmatu, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite town 160 kilometers north of Baghdad, as worshippers were emerging from prayers on the Muslim holy day.

An official at the local hospital said many of the injured had been sent to a larger hospital at Kirkuk because they were so badly wounded in the blast.

A witness to Friday's attack said he thought as many as 20 people may have died. "There are many, many wounded," he said.

Militants have frequently attacked Shi'ite mosques over the past 18 months in an apparent attempt to goad Iraq's Shi'ite majority into retaliation and spark a sectarian civil war with the Sunni Arab minority.

There was more violence in Baghdad, where gunmen shot dead two laborers and a government official in drive-by shootings.

Police said the gunmen, traveling in two cars, opened fire on a group of men near the Shi'ite district of Sadr City as they queued for work, killing two and wounding a dozen.

Minutes later, further down the road, the same gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying officials from the transport ministry, killing one and wounding another, the police said.

South of Baghdad, a car bomber targeted a police convoy in the town of Hasswa, killing three police and wounding six. West of the capital, a roadside bomb killed four Iraqi troops.

The attacks followed two days of heavy bloodshed, including more than a dozen coordinated car bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday that killed about 150 people and wounded hundreds.

Civil war?

The campaign of attacks, many of them claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq, a group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, came in response to a US-Iraqi military offensive on the northern town of Tal Afar, for long a rebel stronghold.

Several thousand Iraqi troops, backed by US armored units and warplanes, launched an assault on the town, near the Syrian border, more than two weeks ago. On Friday, an Iraqi officer said 95 per cent of Tal Afar had been secured.

US troops were letting residents who fled the fighting return to their homes, although only on foot, witnesses said.

Following Wednesday's violence, Zarqawi issued a recorded message threatening an open war on Iraq's majority Shi'ites, a move Iraqis fear could push the country closer towards a full-blown civil war, with sectarian conflict already common.

However, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani played down the threat of warfare among Iraq's Shi'ite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations, telling reporters at the United Nations World Summit in New York that foreigners were responsible.

(China Daily September 17, 2005)