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73 Iraqis killed in US air strikes, car blast

REUTERS, Baghdad
A suicide car bomber killed at least 13 people in an attack on a police checkpoint in Baghdad yesterday, after a night of US air strikes around rebel-held Falluja that killed scores.
A government spokesman said the bomb had detonated beside a line of police vehicles set up to seal off routes to nearby Haifa Street, where US troops were continuing the battles they have been fighting all week to dislodge insurgents.
A large crater was gouged into the road and several police cars were ablaze, sending thick smoke into the sky. The government spokesman said at least 13 people were dead and the US military said as many as 50 were wounded.
On Tuesday, a bomb attack on a police station killed 47 people, the
deadliest single attack in the capital in six months.
The US military is struggling to quell mounting insurgency, intended to undermine the US-backed interim government, enough to hold a national election next January.
It said an air strike on Thursday night near Falluja had killed around 60 foreign fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with a $25 million price on his head who is the Americans' number one foe in Iraq.
Iraq's Health Ministry said at least 45 civilians had been killed in the air strikes. Reuters television images showed bloodied bodies, including women and children, on hospital beds.
Early on Friday, US warplanes destroyed a compound in south
central Falluja that the US military said was also used by Zarqawi's militants.
More than 200 Iraqis have died over the past few days alone in bombings and other violence.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said US diplomats and military commanders recognized the vote could not go ahead nationwide under the current security conditions, and that areas in rebel hands had to be brought back under government control.
But he told the Washington Times, in an interview published on Friday, that "we don't expect the security situation as it exists now on the 16th of September to be the security situation" on the day Iraqis vote.
Friday's violence in Baghdad
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began before dawn near around the Haifa Street area. The US military said its troops had fired on a car packed with explosives that was driving toward a checkpoint, killing two men in the vehicle. Later, blasts and gunfire echoed from Haifa Street as US troops moved in.
Iraqi police said they had arrested 63 militants, including Syrians, Egyptians and Sudanese, in a sweep in Haifa Street.
West of Baghdad on Thursday, three US marines were killed in action in separate incidents, the American military said. At least 777 US military personnel have died in action in Iraq since the US-led invasion last year.
In his interview, Powell disputed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's assertion that the US-led war in Iraq was illegal, saying it was "not a very useful statement to make at this point."
"We should all be gathering around the idea of helping the Iraqis, not getting into these kinds of side issues."
The United Nations has played down Annan's statement, which spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan felt was no different from what he had been saying for more than a year.
On Thursday, in the latest kidnappings of foreigners, gunmen abducted two Americans and a Briton from a house in an affluent neighborhood of central Baghdad.
Police said they had found the body of a man believed to be a Westerner, apparently dead for some time, late on Thursday near Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Australia has been investigating a claim that two of its citizens were kidnapped in the area.
Two male French journalists and two Italian female aid workers have also been taken hostage in the past few weeks.