A suicide driver detonated a car bomb at a guard post outside the Iraqi prime minister's party headquarters in Baghdad Monday, injuring at least 10 people.

The al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq claimed responsibility a day after its leader declared all-out war on democracy.

Mortar rounds slammed into an Iraqi National Guard camp near Baghdad International Airport yesterday, as the rumble of distant explosions reverberated through the capital. There was no report of casualties in the mortar attack.

The suicide bomber struck at a police checkpoint on the road leading to Ayad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord offices in central Baghdad, shaking the city center with a thunderous explosion. Among the wounded were eight policemen and two civilians, said Doctor Mudhar Abdul-Hussein of Yarmouk Hospital.

Al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq said in a website posting that "one of the young lions in the suicide regiment" carried out the attack against the party office of Allawi, "the agent of the Jews and the Christians."

In an audiotape posted Sunday on the website, a speaker claiming to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, declared "fierce war" on democracy and said anyone who takes part in next weekend's Iraqi elections would be considered "an infidel."

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," the speaker said.

Al-Zarqawi, who is a Sunni Arab like most of the insurgents here, has in the past branded Shi'ites as heretics.

The United States has offered a US$25 million reward for al-Zarqawi's capture or death -- the same amount as for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

During weekend appearances on American television, the US ambassador to Iraq acknowledged there were serious security problems ahead of this weekend's landmark ballot. American and Iraqi officials have warned they expect rebels to unleash bloodshed and mayhem to keep voters from the polls in what supporters are advertising as the first free election in this country since the overthrow of Iraq's monarchy in 1958.

During the weekend talk shows, US Ambassador John Negroponte acknowledged an increase in rebel intimidation of Iraqi officials and security forces and said serious security problems remain in the Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad.

Three US soldiers were wounded on Sunday in a mortar attack in Samarra north of Baghdad, the US command said. One of the soldiers was being evacuated to a US military hospital in Germany with serious injuries.

North of the capital, deputy governor of Iraq's Diyala Province, Ghassan al-Khadran, escaped an assassination attempt yesterday morning as a roadside bomb struck his car.

(China Daily January 25, 2005)