BAGHDAD, July 16: A suicide bomber in a fuel truck killed 55 people in a town south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a series of spectacular guerilla attacks to rattle Iraq. The bomb, which police said exploded near a Shia mosque and market, also wounded 82 people in the town of Musayyib.

It followed several attacks which killed at least 16 people, including three British soldiers, on Saturday.

A suicide bomber in a car hit the Doura district in south Baghdad, killing three civilians and two policemen, a police source said.

Violence also erupted near the northern city of Mosul. A suicide bomber strapped with explosives attacked a police station, killing four policemen, police said.

Ten militants blew themselves up across Baghdad on Friday and another attacked Iskindiriya, south of the capital, killing at least 32 people, police said.

In Amara in southeast Iraq, three British soldiers died in what the Ministry of Defence in London said was a suspected roadside bomb. It said the deaths brought to 92 the number of British soldiers who have died in Iraq, including 53 killed in action.

A little-known Iraqi insurgent group said in a Web statement that it was behind the killing of the British soldiers in southern Iraq on Saturday.

“Thank God, this morning ... three British soldiers were killed and at least three others were injured by exploding a package by their patrol in the Maysan province,” the group, calling itself the Imam Hussein Brigades, said.

The statement was posted on a site used by the main Iraqi insurgent groups, including the al Qaeda group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The name suggested it was a Shia group.

The group said it also killed an Iraqi judge in the town of Nassiriya.

Sunni Arab insurgents are leading a campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings in a bid to topple Iraq’s Shia-led government backed by the United States.

In Baghdad, tense officers manned extra police checkpoints throughout the capital, Reuters journalists and drivers reported, after the series of blasts on Friday Al Qaeda described as an offensive to seize control of the city.

“Through the day and the night, Baghdad rang with the music of the mujahideen’s bullets and the prayers of the martyrs,” it said in an Internet statement.

“Our mujahideen now control the streets,” it said. “Our sheikh Abu Musab has urged us to intensify our attacks until America is defeated ... and we will continue in our jihad.”

In Samarra, in the central Sunni heartland, locals reported that US troops and Iraqi police had imposed a curfew, ordering residents to stay in their homes after two civilians were killed by gunmen outside a US base.

On the diplomatic front, Iraqi’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari arrived in Iran for the first visit in decades by a leader of Iraq to its Shi’ite neighbour and former foe.—Reuters