BAGHDAD, Feb 26: At least 21 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed in a series of rebel attacks on Sunday even as security forces kept a tight grip on Baghdad in a bid to quell an outburst of sectarian violence.

At least 16 people were killed and 45 wounded when mortar rounds struck two Shia neighbourhoods in south Baghdad at around 5:30 pm (1430 GMT), an interior ministry official said.

Two people were killed and six wounded, two of them children, when gunmen opened fire from a passing car on a group of people playing football in Diyala, police said.

In a separate attack in the provincial capital of Baquba, gunmen stormed the house of a Shia family and shot dead two men and wounded a woman, according to Saleema Abbas, the wounded woman.

South of the capital, a bomb exploded in a minibus in the mainly Shia city of Hilla, wounding five people.

Earlier a police commando was killed and two wounded in a roadside bombing in nearby Madain, officials said.

In the main southern city of Basra, two people were wounded in an explosion close to a Shia shrine, while in the largest northern city Mosul six policemen were wounded in two separate attacks.

The US military said two soldiers died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad on Sunday.

Security forces banned vehicle traffic in Baghdad after a two-day curfew imposed in a bid to halt sectarian violence that has threatened to trigger a civil war.

Communal disturbances since the bombing of a revered Shia shrine on Wednesday have left at least 120 people dead, according to Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi.—AFP