A car bomb exploded yesterday in Khalis, a town northeast of Baghdad, killing 13 people who were attending a funeral for the victims of a previous attack, hospital officials said.

The bombing in Khalis came two days after gunmen fired at a building belonging to a city council official, killing two people and wounding two. Tuesday's attack targeted the wake for those killed Sunday.

"So far, we've received five of the dead," said Dr. Nasser Jawad

Kadhim, the head of the morgue at Baqouba General Hospital. "Thirty-five of the injured have been hospitalized." Other hospital sources said 13 were killed.

Two US marines were also killed in action and one died later from wounds received during an operation in a restive Iraqi province, the US military said yesterday.

"Two marines assigned to First Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action and one marine died of wounds received in action Monday in the (centre-west)

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Al-Anbar province while conducting security and stability operations," the military saidin a statement.

Meanwhile, US soldiers shot dead one Iraqi child and wounded another when the car their father was driving failed to stop at a checkpoint in Baghdad Monday night despite repeated warnings, the US military claimed yesterday.

"US soldiers fired on an Iraqi vehicle that failed to obey verbal and visual warnings to stop near western Baghdad," it saidin a statement.

Also yesterday, a group of armed, masked Iraqi men threatened to kill Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if he did notimmediately leave the country, accusing him of killing innocent Iraqis and defiling the Muslim religion.

The threats revealed the deep anger many Iraqis feel toward foreign fighters, whom many consider as illegitimate a presence here as the 160,000 troops of the US-led coalition.

In a videotape sent to the al-Arabiya television station, a group calling itself the "Salvation Movement," questioned how al-Zarqawi could use Islam to justify the killing of innocents, the targeting of government officials and the kidnapping and beheading of foreigners.

"He must leave Iraq immediately, he and his followers and everyone who gives shelter to him and his criminal actions," said a man on the video.

The video marked the first time an Iraqi group made such a public threat against al-Zarqawi, for whom the US troops carried out an air strike on Fallujah Monday killing at least 12 people.

The US warplanes dropped four 500-pound (227-kilogram) bombs and two 1,000-pound bombs "against a Mujahedeen safe house," said a US military spokesman.

(AFP, AP)