Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda wing in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a series of brutal attacks today as the Iraqi Government released two new photographs of the terror chief.

The images show al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, with short hair and a cropped beard. One shows him wearing an Arab kefiyeh headdress.

The photographs, which were undated but described as recent, are among only a handful of the Jordanian available. They show him looking slightly older and chubbier than previous mugshots released by the US State Department

Al-Zarqawi's group said that it was behind a series of attacks today in and around the town of Baquba that killed at least a dozen people, seven of them Iraqi soldiers.

Insurgents launched a series of apparently co-ordinated attacks in and around the town, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, including a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks on road checkpoints. At least 26 people were wounded.

The al-Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on the internet: "The mujahidin ambushed a unit of the apostate guards in Baquba ... and a brave lion carried out an attack on the riffraff and turned them into scattered fragments."

Four people were also killed by insurgent attacks in Baghdad and 15 people were reported to have died in the town of Balad after a suicide bomber blew up his car outside the house of an Iraqi army officer.

Al-Zarqawi has a $25 million bounty on his head, the same amount offered by the United States for Osama bin Laden. Among the terror outrages he is blamed for are the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 and the murder of the British hostage Ken Bigley.

US and Iraqi troops stepped up operations in al-Zarqawi's stronghold of Samarra at the weekend hoping to flush out the terror leader, whom Bin Laden has named as the "emir" of the Iraqi insurgency. A senior Iraqi official said that 66 suspects had been arrested in the operation and hundreds more were expected. All entrances leading to Samarra have been sealed.

The violence came a day after politicians set March 16 for the opening of the country's first democratically elected parliament in modern history.

The day marks the anniversary of the 1988 Saddam-ordered chemical attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed 5,000 people. After weeks of horsetrading, a deal was hardening to name Jalal Talabani, a leader of the minority Kurds, as the country's next President.

The more powerful prime minister's job will go to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a deeply conservative Shia who leads the Islamic Dawa party. His nomination, which the Kurds have agreed to, has been endorsed by the most powerful Shia cleric in Iraq - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Ayad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister who controls 40 seats in the assembly, has also has been negotiating to keep his job. Officials have said the post of speaker probably would go to a Sunni Arab - either Ghazi al-Yawer, the interim President, or Hajim al-Hassani, interim industry minister.

A Sunni Arab would go far toward appeasing the Sunni minority, which represents 15-20 per cent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people and is believed to make up the core of the insurgency. Unlike the Kurds, Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the election to protest at the US presence in the country.

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