BAQUBA, June 26: Political parties became the latest target of Iraq's resistance as guerillas hit the local office of the prime minister's political group and a Shia party in the restive city of Baquba, while a car bomb in the north wounded a top Kurdish politician.

The attacks, which left at least six people dead, capped a week of continued violence scarring the country's countdown to the inauguration of an interim government on June 30. And officials have warned of worse to come.

Anxious to appear in control, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he was ready to take "necessary measures" within two weeks to crush the violence.

"The Iraqi security forces as well as the Iraqi army would be prepared in a week or two to impose the necessary measures to deal with the terrorists and the terrorist activities throughout the country," Mr Allawi told reporters.

Iraq's interim government also confirmed it had asked for assistance from Nato to train its new army and indicated that if the military alliance wanted to send troops that would be most welcome.

In a sign of the challenge ahead, guerillas blew up the local headquarters of Mr Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party in Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, and attacked the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

"The third floor of a building that houses the offices of the Iraqi National Accord was devastated by an explosion," a witness said.

Although no one was hurt, several hundred metres away, a group of armed men, including a potential suicide bomber, killed four people and wounded two others when they stormed SCIRI's Baquba base.

Party members at the scene said three security guards were slain, while an ambulance driver, Jawad Kazem, described how he had evacuated a mortally wounded civilian who had been caught in the crossfire.

Guards shot dead the suicide attacker before he could blow himself up.

The attack came just two days after Baquba was caught up in an assault on local police stations in four cities across central and northern Iraq that left around 90 people dead.

In anticipation of further unrest, security guards at all political offices in the city were on high alert, surrounding party buildings, keeping watch from the rooftops and blocking roads leading to the area.

Adding to the chaos, a car bomb exploded in the northern city of Arbil, wounding 18 people, including Mahmud Mohammad, the Kurdistan Democratic Party culture minister, and killing one of his guards, the KDP said.

On Saturday, a US soldier also died from wounds received in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a US patrol in central Baghdad on Friday night.

And, following more than three weeks of relative calm, militiamen loyal to radical Shia leader Moqtada Sadr opened fire on a US military convoy that entered the centre of Najaf, wounding two people.

Mr Allawi was put under a death sentence this week in an audiotape posted on a website in the name of the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Mussab al Zarqawi.

"Allawi... you have escaped many times, without knowing it, from well organized ambushes that we laid," says the voice, purportedly that of Zarqawi.-AFP