BAGHDAD, March 24: Suicide attacks waged by a lorry driver posing as a goods merchant and a bomber in a sweet shop killed dozens of Iraqis on Saturday underscoring the vicious nature of a changing insurgency.

In the most lethal attack on a day that left 48 people dead, a bomber killed 20 Iraqis after driving a lorry packed with explosives and bricks into a tightly guarded police compound in Baghdad’s militant stronghold of Dura.

Masquerading as a driver bringing building materials for construction work being carried on at the site, he steered the truck past the first police checkpoint before blowing up both body and vehicle, a security official said.

Sixteen policemen, two detainees in police custody and two civilians were killed as the blast tore through the front of the police station and gouged a giant crater out of the ground, splattering body parts and debris.

Another 26 people were wounded in the blast, the latest attack to underscore the limits of a massive US-led security operation launched last month in a bid to quell the raging insurgency and sectarian warfare in Baghdad.

“There were many corpses lying in the compound of the police station. Some of the bodies were burnt, while some had shrapnel wounds... and many cars (were) destroyed,” said one US soldier who quickly rushed to the scene.

Dura, a known haunt of Al Qaeda in Iraq fundamentalists, is one of the most volatile districts of Baghdad where Iraqi and US forces have concentrated raids in a huge security operation launched last month to try to quell unrest.

The efforts of around 90,000 Iraqi and US troops have seen a reduction in execution-style killings, considered the hallmark of Shia militias, but spectacular bombings, long favoured by Sunni insurgents, have continued.

In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a sweet shop in the town of Tal Afar, killing 10 people and wounding three, town’s mayor Najim Abdallah al-Juburi said.

Also among Sunday's dead were 10 killed by another truck bomb that heavily damaged a small Shia religious site just as worshippers finished prayers in the mixed sectarian town of Al-Haswa, south of Baghdad, Police Lieutenant Haider al-Shammari said.

Another eight Iraqis were killed in other attacks and 10 bullet-riddled corpses were found in Baghdad, as authorities opened an investigation into a twin-bomb assassination attempt against the government’s top Sunni Arab official, Deputy Prime Minister Salam Zubayi.

In their investigation into Iraq’s latest high-profile assassination attempt, the authorities were interrogating detained bodyguards of Zubayi over the bomb attack on Friday that kept him in hospital for a second day.

The brazen attack inside Zubayi’s heavily guarded personal compound while he was praying on the Muslim day of rest exposed the perilous security of even top-ranking officials and underscored tensions within the Sunni community.—AFP