Agence France-Presse,
American forces fired an artillery barrage at targets in southern Baghdad on Sunday while Iraqi rescuers scoured wreckage for the victims of another deadly car bomb that left more than 70 dead.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, meanwhile, warned that Iraq's violence could spill over to other countries if the war-torn nation's bloodshed did not end.
As the sun rose over the war-torn capital, a series of massive detonations were heard from southwestern districts, where Iraqi officials said a US operation was under way in support of the city's joint security plan.
“Eighteen rounds of artillery were fired from Forward Operating Base Falcon,” said US spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Garver, without identifying the target of a salvo that could be heard 10 kilometres (six miles) away.
In London, the ministry of defence announced the death of one more soldier in a small arms fire attack while on patrol in southern Iraq.
The soldier, from 2nd Battalion The Rifles, was carrying out routine checks in the Al-Ashar district of central Basra when he came under attack.
The death brings to 146 the number of British troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that was led by the United States and its main ally Britain.
In further unrest, two people were killed in the central city of Diwaniyah, a regular site of clashes between security forces and militiamen, police said.
The death toll from Saturday's suicide bombing near a revered shrine in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Karbala rose to 71 overnight as scores of victims suffered in hospital wards crowded with 178 wounded.
City health spokesman Salim Khadhim told AFP that the dead included five women, five children and eight victims burned so entirely that their age or gender could not be determined.
“There was a two-year-old Iranian girl among those killed, and four Indian men. Two Iranian men were wounded,” he added. Karbala is a site of pilgrimage for Shiites from around the world.
US command in Baghdad reported that fighting and roadside bombs had claimed the lives of seven more American soldiers and two marines over two days of intense violence, bringing the month's toll to 91.
With two days left, April is already the seventh deadliest month for coalition forces since a US-led invasion force overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein in March 2003, only to come under attack from a violent insurgency.
The scale of the carnage, more than 10 weeks after the start of a major US and Iraqi security plan, will serve as another blow to the authority of Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and US President George W. Bush.
The rage in Karbala after Saturday's attack — in which protesters were quicker to blame the failure of the Iraqi security forces than the bomber — underlined Maliki's fragile authority.
The blast followed a pattern suggesting an attempt by Sunni extremists to foment sectarian violence. The suicide bomber detonated his payload near a gate to the Ibn Abbas mosque, a revered Shiite shrine.
But while the Shiite-led government blames all of Iraq's many problems on “Saddamists and takfiris” or Sunni extremists, the enraged crowd that thronged Karbala pointed to corruption and incompetence.
“Most people in Karbala expected such an attack by terrorists after we heard that they are fleeing Ramadi and Baghdad. Karbala is near to these cities,” said restaurant owner Muhammed Hameed.
“I do not know what measures the police took after a previous explosion a fortnight ago in a popular market,” he said, referring to a near identical attack that killed 42 people.
Maliki warned that Iraq's bloodshed could spill over to other countries.
“The terrorist attacks that target Iraq are not limited to Iraq only but will spread to every country in the world,” he said in a statement released by his office.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, called Maliki confirming Tehran would take part in the international conference on security this week in Egypt, Maliki's office said.
Iran had delayed confirming it participation, expressing anger over the presence of the United States at the meeting.
Washington accuses Tehran of fomenting trouble in Iraq by supplying weapons and training to extremist factions. Tehran denies these charges.
