BAGHDAD, Nov 18: Seventeen Iraqis died on Thursday in the persistent wave of violence that has left dozens dead over the past few days as US-led forces pressed their battle against militants.

Seven Iraqis were killed by two separate roadside bombs north of Baghdad, police said. Four of them died outside the restive city of Samarra and three more near Baiji, a day after 14 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 26 wounded in unrest in the key refinery town.

A contractor was found beheaded near the Tigris River in Balad. Police said the victim had been working at a US military base near the town.

Two bystanders and an attacker were killed and four wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a police station in western Baghdad, the US military said.

An Iraqi woman was among the dead in the blast, at the Yarmuk police station, but the military said no US soldiers or Iraqi security personnel were among the casualties.

Iraqi security forces are the target of almost daily attack by militants across the country, with dozens killed in recent months.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, two mortar rounds struck the airport complex, the military said. It was not known if there were any casualties.

At least two Iraqi workmen were killed and a passer-by seriously wounded in a blast near a US military position in Kirkuk, said the northern oil city's police chief.

Some 60 people have been killed over the past few days as violence flared across the "Sunni belt" north and west from the capital in the wake of the US assault on Fallujah.

A mortar attack on Thursday on a government building in the main northern city of Mosul wounded five Iraqi security personnel, said Lt Ziad Framzi.

US troops were sweeping through Mosul, and Iraqi commandos were set to storm rebel strongholds in the west of the city of more than a million people.

Four militants were killed and two policemen wounded south of Baghdad when the guerrillas attacked a police convoy in the town of Latifiyah.

Nine Iraqis were killed in clashes on Wednesday between militants and US troops in Ramadi, which has been wracked by unrest since last week.

Earlier in the week 36 guerillas died when a day-long battle broke out in the city of Baquba, the military said.

104 SUSPECTS HELD: Iraqi police and national guards detained more than 100 suspected militants on Thursday in raids around Haifa Street, a rebellious Sunni stronghold in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

In all 104 people were arrested, including nine who were suspected of having escaped from the US-led offensive against the rebel city of Fallujah over the past 10 days, spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. Many weapons were also seized, he added. "They are mainly Iraqis but there may be some Syrians and other Arabs," Kadhim said.

US troops were involved in backing up the raids, in an area where they have clashed with anti-American insurgents in recent months. Militants in Haifa Street and Fallujah have been blamed by the Iraqi government for bomb attacks in the capital.

Washington has said that leading insurgents, including Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had probably fled Fallujah before the military onslaught began last Monday.-AFP/Reuters