Car bombs and shootings claimed 26 lives in Iraq on Thursday and the US military announced the deaths of five more troops, as Britain's Tony Blair asserted the country is not in the grip of civil war.
Eight people died and 25 were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a joint Iraqi military and police checkpoint in central Baghdad's Kharmana Square, security officials said.
A soldier and a civilian died when another checkpoint was attacked by a suicide car bomber in Baghdad's southwestern Yarmuk district, the officials said.
In another attack, five workers were killed and two dozen hurt when a bomb on a bus exploded at the entrance to a factory in Iskandiriyah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad, as employees arrived for work.
Seven people were also reported killed around the restive city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, five of them shot dead by gunmen who attacked a series of gas stations and set them on fire, police said.
Elsewhere four more Iraqis were killed, while the US military announced the deaths of another five US troops.
One soldier, it said, was killed on Wednesday while on combat duty in the western Sunni province of Anbar and a marine died in the same province in a non-combat incident the same day.
Another three soldiers were killed and nine wounded in blasts and battles in central Diyala province of which Baquba is the capital, where reinforcements were sent this week as part of a US troop "surge" to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas.
The latest deaths brought to 3,205 the US military's losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that despite the raging violence four years after the invasion, Iraq is not in a state of civil war.
"It's not a country at civil war. The majority of people in Iraq don't want this violence," Blair said in a live interview with Sky News.
"They don't want to go to war with each other. Small numbers of extremists on either side who don't represent the majority are trying to provoke people into a civil war. That's a completely different thing."
A Pentagon report released on Wednesday said the last quarter of 2006 had registered the maximum number of attacks since the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
"Although most attacks continue to be directed against coalition forces, Iraqi civilians suffer the vast majority of the casualties," said the report, released in Washington.
A chart showed a surge in sectarian incidents from September through December 2006, with murders spiking to about 1,300 in December from less than 100 in January.
"Casualties from these attacks decreased slightly in January, but remained troublingly high," the report said.
The quarterly report on "Stability and Security in Iraq" did not assess security conditions since the United States increased the number of troops in Baghdad to try break the spiral of sectarian violence.
But the US military spokesman in Iraq, Major General William Caldwell, said on Wednesday that attacks had decreased since the launch of the Baghdad security operation on February 14.
"There has been an over 50 percent reduction in murders and executions," Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.
"We are seeing positive signs on streets," said Caldwell. "We know there is a decrease in violence, but we still need to be patient."
The new security plan, called Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law), is currently seeing a "surge" of US troop reinforcements.
US President George W. Bush at the weekend approved another 2,400 soldiers and 2,200 military police, which will support the 21,500 extra troops he has already announced. By June more than 160,000 US troops will be in theatre.
Caldwell said the military's main concern was "high-profile car bombs" and that attempts were being made "to locate car bomb factories" around Baghdad.
