SAMARRA, Jan 23: Ten Iraqis, including a mother and her child, were killed on Sunday in attacks north of Baghdad, while insurgents dynamited a voting centre, a government building and a police station around the country.

The US military said American and Iraqi security forces have rounded up more than 100 suspected insurgents since Saturday, ramping up efforts to thwart rebels trying to wreck Iraq's national elections being held in one week's time.

The detainees included a suspect picked up in Baghdad and billed as one of Iraq's top 10 most-wanted, the US military said. Declining to name the individual, the military admitted it was neither Abu Musab al-Zarqawi nor Saddam Hussein's henchman Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri.

In the latest bloodshed, three teachers from a technical oil college died in a roadside bombing north of the oil refinery town of Baiji, police said. A married couple and their daughter were hit by a bomb blast that targeted an Iraqi military convoy near Baiji, police added. The mother and daughter were killed. The husband was seriously wounded.

One insurgent and three Iraqi soldiers were also killed in a firefight in Baiji, police said. Major General John Batiste, the commanding US general in Salaheddin province, which is considered a potential trouble zone on election day, has identified Baiji as one of his greater challenges.

South of Baghdad, insurgents dynamited a polling station near Hilla in the predominantly Shiite province of Babil, police said. Attackers blew up a school used as a voting centre in the town of Albu Alwan, said policeman Moahmmed al-Ghanem.

No one was inside when the attackers levelled the building, he said. An Iraqi soldier was killed by gunmen as he entered his home in Tuz Khurmatu, north of Tikrit, while three other soldiers were wounded in a firefight near Ad-Dawr, north of Samarra, where Saddam was captured in 2003.

A poster on a street in Ad-Dawr signed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's group Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers claimed to have blown up the town's local council building on Saturday.

"The resistance has destroyed one of the lairs of the spies and collaborators. May the world be warned that he who gives his hand to the occupier and apostate will be punished," the poster read.

The statement also said the group was responsible for firing 10 mortars at a joint US-Iraqi security centre, but police said no one was hurt in the attack. Meanwhile, rebels blew up a police station in the western town of Hit, police said. US Marines were surrounding the town, demanding the assailants be handed over, residents said.

In the northern city of Mosul, US forces said they had detained 42 people as they battled to subdue the out-of-control city, where 20 US soldiers have been killed since December 21, including 14 in a suicide bombing on a military base. -AFP