THE death toll in guerrilla attacks since Iraq’s first-elected Government was announced on Friday rose to more than 100 yesterday with a series of car bombings and shootings.

Two large squads of gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police position near a US base on the edge of Baghdad, killing five officers. Five civilians were also killed by a bomb which was aimed at an American convoy in the capital.

The Iraqi death toll was up by 50 per cent last month, with almost 570 people killed in attacks. The upsurge shattered hopes that January’s elections might have curbed the two-year rebellion, which a US general said had lost none of its strength in the past year.

The violence also marked two years since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on an aircraft carrier bearing the banner, “Mission accomplished”. As the attacks continued, a Sunni Arab organisation that had refused to join Iraq’s Shia-dominated Government last week accused the authorities of sending police and Shia militiamen to raid its offices and beat up its members.

Fakhri al-Qaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni National Dialogue Council, claimed that 30 cars of police commandos and members of the Badr Corps, the militia of the main Shia party now in power, arrived in the middle of the night on Thursday, just hours after the Sunni group had refused to join the Government that parliament had ratified.

Mr al-Qaisi said yesterday: “We were surprised during the night after we announced we were not participating, when 30 cars, 15 of which belonged to the Interior Ministry commandos and the second half belonged to Badr. The first were in uniform with three commando officers, while the others were in civilian clothes with black and green headbands, which are usually used by the Badr militia. It was clear they were Badr.”

He said that the men had arrived well after curfew, which would indicate that they were travelling with official permission, and had beaten up several sheikhs at the headquarters compound of the Sunni group, which includes hardline Salafist leaders. The raiders also took mobile phones and computers, he said.

The next morning, a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the building, killing one of the guards. “We are expecting a new era of assassinations and we all expect to be targets: me and the Sunni sheikhs. You are talking to me now but tomorrow I might be dead. It’s a war on Sunnis pushed by Iran,” said Mr al-Qaisi, referring to the Badr Corps’ links with Tehran, where its fighters were trained in exile during Saddam Hussein’s era.

The Sunni council had been wooed by the new Government, which is desperate to offer important ministries to Sunnis in an attempt to quell the two-year insurgency. The council walked out after many of its demands were rejected. Some Shia officials said the council’s links to insurgents were too close for them to be offered sensitive posts, such as the defence ministry.

A car bomb exploded at the funeral of a Kurdish official in northern Iraq yesterday, which killed 20 Iraqi people and wounding more than 30. The attack occurred in the city of Tal Afar, 150km (93 miles) east of the Syrian border.

Khisru Goran, deputy provincial governor and a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that a suicide attacker detonated a car packed with explosives in a large tent where the funeral was being held. The funeral was being held for Sayed Talib Sayed Wahab, a KDP official shot by insurgents in Mosul, US troops tried to take 30 wounded people to a local hospital but unidentified gunmen blocked the road.

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