KIRKUK, June 14: At least 40 people were killed in Iraq on Tuesday as Kurds in the autonomous north swore in former rebel leader Massoud Barzani as their first president. The US military said a rocket-propelled grenade killed one soldier and wounded two in Baghdad, bringing US military deaths since the 2003 invasion to 1,698, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

Two other US soldiers were killed on Monday in a roadside bomb attack in the restive city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the military said.

In the deadliest attack on Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of civil servants waiting for pay cheques at a bank in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, killing at least 20 people and wounding 81, police said.

A statement posted on the internet in the name of the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna group said claimed responsibility for the attack and warned potential recruits: “We will follow you everywhere, whether you are wearing military fatigues or civilian clothes.”

The bombers struck shortly before Mr Barzani was sworn in as president of autonomous Kurdistan in nearby Arbil and targeted a bitterly contested city that the Kurds want as capital of an expanded autonomous region.

North of Baghdad, another car bomb killed 10 more Iraqis, including two children, and wounded seven, security and hospital sources said.

Troops had been called in to reinforce a police station in the town of Kanaan that was under mortar attack, a police officer said. They were hit by the car bomb parked nearby.

Near Ramadi, US troops killed five Iraqi civilians and wounded four, believing their car had a bomb, a US military statement said.

The deaths followed a car bomb attack at their military checkpoint that had killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded another, it added.

In Arbil, Mr Barzani, son of the Kurd nationalist hero Mustafa Barzani, was sworn in as president before the 111-member regional assembly.