Iraqi authorities extended a daytime curfew in Baghdad yesterday in an apparent effort to prevent violence after one of the bloodiest weeks this year.
State television announced that a four-hour traffic ban in force every Friday to curb car bomb attacks on mosques during weekly prayers would be extended through the day.
A gun and grenade attack on a market just outside Baghdad on Monday and a suicide car bombing to the south of the capital killed 120 people this week. US data showed attacks on security forces in Baghdad has averaged 34 a day over several days, compared to an average of 24 in recent months.
Baghdad morgue alone has taken in 1,000 bodies this month.
US commanders are speaking about a looming fight to the finish in the capital between Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's two-month-old unity government and Sunni Arab rebels with links to al-Qaeda and ousted president Saddam Hussein.
The US ambassador has warned that a greater threat may be the mounting sectarian violence between minority Sunnis and the Shiites empowered by the US invasion which ousted Saddam.
That has brought a risk that millions of ordinary but almost universally armed Iraqis may be dragged into all-out civil war.
US, Iraqi and international leaders have sounded alarms this week as new data showed tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in fear of death squads since a government of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds was formed in May and that some 6,000 civilians may have been killed in violence in two months.
The regular Friday ban on traffic in Baghdad from 11am to 3pm has been extended to 7pm for the day, state media said. An overnight curfew operates daily from 9pm to 6am.
Describing the capital as a "must-win" for both the rebels and the government, US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell conceded on Thursday that Maliki's month-old security clampdown in Baghdad had achieved only a "slight downtick" in violence, with civilian deaths steady.
US-led forces have also been cracking down on Shiite warlords, many of them apparently rogue elements of pro-government militias that Maliki has promised to rein in.
Meanwhile, at least seven Iraqis were killed and several injured yesterday morning following a US military strike on a residential district of northern Baqubah, around 60km east of Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Hospital sources told reporters that the bodies of seven Iraqi civilians, all of whom were from the same family, were admitted to the Baqubah General Hospital yesterday morning following a US military strike that hit several residential buildings near the al-Rahma Hospital in northern Baqubah.
According to witness accounts, US forces conducted morning raids on a number of buildings in northern Baqubah which resulted in localized firefights. The US forces pulled out from the area and evacuated a number of wounded.
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