A suicide bomber struck outside a bank as elderly men and women waited to cash their pension checks Tuesday, killing 23 people and wounding nearly 100 in this oil-rich northern city that has become a flashpoint for sectarian tension.

Elsewhere, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Kan'an, 30 miles north of Baghdad, and the bodies of 24 men — apparently victims of recent ambushes — were brought to a hospital in the capital.

And an American soldier was killed in a roadside bombing targeting a US convoy in southern Baghdad, according to the military said that also said two soldiers assigned to a Marine unit were killed in a similar attack Monday in the western city of Ramadi.

The violence in Kirkuk was the worst to hit the ethnically mixed city, 180 miles north of Baghdad, since the war started in 2003. The largest previous attack was the Sept. 4 suicide car bombing outside an Iraqi police academy in the city that killed 20 people.

A man wearing a belt packed with explosives blew himself up outside the Rafidiyan Bank just after it opened Tuesday morning, said Gen. Sherko Shakir, Kirkuk's police chief.

A crowd of street vendors and elderly men and women waiting outside the bank bore the brunt of the blast, and a pregnant woman and several children were among the victims.

Body parts, including arms and legs, were strewn in a 20-yard radius from the scene of the explosion, which occurred close to a pedestrian bridge and left the pavement covered in rubble and glass. Several bodies were under the wreckage and at least two parked cars nearby were set ablaze.

"It was the biggest awful crime in Kirkuk since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime," Shakir said.

Al-Qaida's northern affiliate, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility for both suicide bombings in northern Iraq and threatened more violence in retaliation for the arrests and killings of Sunni Arabs.

The US soldier was killed on the 230th anniversary of the formation of the US Army. At least 1,704 US military members have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

"Today is a day when we reflect on the heritage of the army and those who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and the latest death in Baghdad is obviously a sad event on our birthday," military spokesman Sgt. David Abrams said.

Also Tuesday, US Marines and Iraqi soldiers killed five Iraqi civilians at an entrance to the volatile western town of Ramadi shortly after a suicide attack on a military checkpoint left one Iraqi soldier dead, the military said.

Insurgents have routinely launched deadly attacks in Kirkuk apparently seeking to foment ethnic tension in the city populated Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and Turkmens.

The motives behind the Kirkuk attack were unclear, but it coincided with the swearing in of veteran guerrilla leader Massoud Barzani as the first president of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region in nearby Irbil, 50 miles north of Kirkuk.

Kurds have long coveted Kirkuk as the capital of an autonomous Kurdish region encompassing all three of their northern provinces.

Saddam forced nearly 100,000 Kurds out of the city as part of an "Arabization" plan. The Shiite political parties that control the government have shied away from the issue of giving Kurds control of the city, saying that the central government would retain future control of its oil riches.

Sarkut Saleh, a street vendor who sells detergent and suffered leg injuries in the blast, said he didn't understand why civilians were targeted.

"I did not join the Iraqi army or police because I wanted to stay away from death, but I was injured today," he said. "I do not know why the terrorists have targeted a crowd of innocent civilians who want to feed their families. This a crime against humanity."

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, speaking in parliament after the Kirkuk attack, also accused the insurgents of targeting civilians — as the number of people killed by militants since the April 28 inception of his Shiite-dominated government hit at least 1,018 people.

"They are trying now to avoid the military areas, the areas controlled by the multinational or Iraqi forces and they are now conducting their operations in the markets," al-Jaafari said in parliament shortly before a vote of confidence.

Al-Jaafari's 37-member government was overwhelmingly approved by a show of hands in the 275-member parliament. But the government has been criticized for its inability to stop insurgent attacks.
 
The spree of killings comes as lawmakers wrangle over how big a say Sunni Arab Muslims should have drawing up the country's new constitution. The dispute threatens to further alienate minority Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam but lost power to long-oppressed Shiites and Kurds after the dictator's ouster.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army terrorist group, which is based in the north and affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the Kirkuk attack in a statement on a Web site commonly used by Islamic militants.

"One of our brothers from the martyrdom seekers brigade blew up his explosive belt in the middle of this gathering," the group said, claiming the attack was aimed at off-duty police officers waiting to get paid.

The group accused the Shiite-dominated military and security forces of "arresting, torturing and killing" Sunni Arabs.

"You should know that these Muslims have brothers who vowed themselves to take the revenge," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.

The group also said in a separate statement that it was responsible for the suicide car bombing against an Iraqi army checkpoint that killed five soldiers and wounding two others in Kan'an.

In Baghdad, the bodies of 24 men — some beheaded — were brought to a hospital, Iraqi officials said. The men had been killed in recent ambushes on convoys in western Iraq, seven on Sunday and 17 last Thursday.

Another suicide car bombing that targeted a joint US-Iraqi checkpoint at an entry point to Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, killed an Iraqi soldier.

Five civilians in one of two cars behind the suicide attacker that ignored warning signals to stop also were killed when US and Iraqi forces opened fire, believing they also could be suicide bombers, US military spokeswoman Lt. Kate Vanden Bossche said.

Security forces also captured a reported key member of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group accused of building and selling cars used by suicide bombers, the Iraqi government said.

He was identified as Jassim Hazan Hamadi al-Bazi, also known as Abu Ahmed, and was arrested June 7, the government said. It added that he was part of an al-Qaida cell run by a man identified as Hussayn Ibrahim.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies June 15, 2005)