A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed more than 20 people when he blew himself up among mourners at a Shi’ite funeral north of Baghdad on Monday, Iraqi police said.
The attack took place inside a crowded mourning tent in the town of Khalis in volatile Diyala province. More than 35 people had been wounded, police said, adding they expected the death toll to rise.
Since United States and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown in Baghdad in February, militants including al-Qaeda have increasingly shifted the focus of their attacks outside the capital.
Diyala, a religiously mixed area, has been the scene of fierce fighting between US troops and al-Qaeda as well as Sunni Arab insurgents.
Five US soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, raising the number of American troops killed this month to more than 100 and making April one of the deadliest of the war for US forces.
The toll could increase the pressure on US President George Bush, who is fighting a plan by Democrats to set a timetable for withdrawing US forces from Iraq.
Bush has vowed to veto a war spending Bill from Democrats that requires combat troops to begin withdrawing by October 1. The Democrat-controlled Congress plans to send the Bill to Bush on Tuesday.
The US military said three soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Sunday. A marine was killed in western Anbar province on Sunday.
Another soldier was killed by small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, the military said.
The security crackdown in Baghdad is seen as a final attempt to halt Iraq’s plunge into all-out civil war between majority Shi’ites and once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs.
US commanders acknowledge that the offensive, which has led to the deployment of thousands of extra troops on the streets, has increased the risk of military casualties.
Before the announcement of the latest deaths, the independent Icasualties.org website had put the number of US troops killed in Iraq in April at 99. About half have been killed in and around Baghdad.
About 3 350 US troops and many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003.
April has also been a bad month for British forces. Twelve have been killed in April, the highest number of casualties in a single month since March 2003, when 27 were killed in the opening days of the war.
British Defence Secretary Des Browne made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Monday and met his Iraqi counterpart, the British embassy said. — Reuters
Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia, Mussab al-Khairalla, Waleed Ibrahim and Aseel Kami