BAGHDAD, Dec 25: At least 13 Iraqis were killed in a string of Christmas Day shootings and bombings, as US President George Bush thanked American soldiers for their sacrifice and for protecting America.

In Baghdad, rescuers lifted blackened corpses from the ruins of a Christmas Eve suicide truck bombing that killed eight people, further unnerving Iraq's embattled Christian community as they celebrated the birth of Christ.

Five Iraqis, including a woman, were killed and another five wounded when a makeshift bomb exploded on a road frequented by US convoys in the volatile bastion of Samarra, said police.

To the south, three Iraqis were killed in another deadly bombing between Najaf and Karbala, a week after twin attacks killed 66 people in the two holy cities.

A doctor at a clinic in Khan al-Nus, north of Najaf, said three Iraqis died and two were wounded when a car bomb exploded in the path of a US military convoy, which escaped unscathed.

The Najaf police chief has accused Damascus of being behind last Sunday's bombing, charging that a suspect "confessed that Syrian intelligence services had played a role".

In a clutch of targeted assassinations, an Iraqi working as an interpreter for the US military and his wife were shot dead by gunmen near the northern city of Mosul - their bodies riddled with 30 bullet holes, said police.

And just north of the capital, gunmen mowed down a local council member and his friend, while another man died when the bomb he was planting on the side of a road near Balad exploded prematurely, said police.

As millions across the world celebrated Christmas, the US president thanked American forces fighting in Iraq and other hotspots for their sacrifice.

In Baghdad, an AFP correspondent saw bodies being lifted from the rubble of houses destroyed when a fuel tanker, manned by a suicide bomber, blew up.-AFP