BALAD, Sept 30: At least 12 Iraqis were killed in a car bomb explosion on Friday in a surge of violence ahead of the Oct 15 constitutional referendum that has claimed more than 110 lives in two days.

The bomb ripped through a crowded market place in the southern town of Hilla. Police and health officials said 47 were wounded in the attack, just hours after three car bomb blasts killed 98 in the mainly Shia town of Balad on Thursday night.

Twenty-five children were among the dead over the two days of attacks.

Five American soldiers were also killed on Thursday in one of the deadliest bombings on the US military in weeks, near Ramadi, a bastion of Sunni resistance west of Baghdad.

The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings.

Furious Balad residents blamed the attacks on ‘foreign fighters’, long accused by the US military of infiltrating Iraq from Syria, to undermine the referendum.

“What have those Jordanians and Palestinians and Saudis got to do with us? Shame on them!” Abu Waleed, a hotel owner in Balad who said seven people staying in his hotel died in the blasts, shouted angrily.

“Why is this happening? This is a criminal act and the constitution is going to succeed in spite of them,” he cried.

Outside a hospital a doctor, Dawoud Allam, posted lists of the dead and the 119 wounded on a wall. Of the dead, 25 were children under 15, while 14 could not be identified, he said.

Crowds voiced their defiance by chanting: “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for the constitution” — a parody of the days when crowds cried out support for Saddam Hussein.—Reuters