A spate of violence killed 28 people in the past 24 hours in Iraq, among them 12 members of the Kurdish peshmerga forces who died in a bomb blast near the Syrian border, officials said on Monday.

The country's north bore the brunt of the violence, with the attack on the peshmerga troops at the town of Rabiyah, three car bombs exploding in separate incidents in the main city of Mosul, and a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in the town of Tal Afar.

Local police said the car bomb parked on the side of the road near Rabiyah, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Iraq's main northern city of Mosul, exploded as a vehicle carrying peshmerga troops drove by, killing 12 and wounding five.

The Kurdish security forces form part of the Iraqi army.

At Tal Afar, 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of people attending a funeral, killing four people and wounding 35, police said.

The attack was "against a wake being held in memory of an Iraqi soldier killed two days ago," the US military said in a statement on the incident.

Police in Mosul, meanwhile, said fighters exploded three car bombs separately in the city centre, including one against a passing patrol of US and Iraqi troops which killed one person and wounded six.

In another incident, two policemen and eight civilians were wounded when a parked car bomb exploded after police found it parked on a roadside in Al-Ugaidat neighborhood, a local police officer said.

A third car bomb exploded in Mosul's Mahatta neighborhood but caused no injuries, he said.

Violence in Baghdad, meanwhile, killed 11 people, including five civilians who died when they were struck by a roadside bomb in the city centre aimed at a police patrol.

The bomb attack struck at around 11:00 am (0800 GMT) in Nidhal Street, one of the embattled capital's main thoroughfares, Iraqi security and medical officials said.

Five passers-by were killed and nine people wounded, two of them policemen, a security official said.

The US military announced that two American soldiers were killed on Monday by roadside bombs in separate incidents in Iraq, pushing the toll for the first half of April to 24.

Most of the casualties in the bloodiest fortnight this year for the American military have occurred in Baghdad, where US and Iraqi forces are battling Shiite militiamen they say are refusing to lay down their arms.

The US military also announced Monday the deaths of six fighters killed late Sunday by American forces in east Baghdad, where most of the fighting of the past nine days has occurred.

The clashes which have killed around 90 people have been focused mainly in Sadr City, bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The sprawling township was Monday still under partial curfew amid warnings by the Iraqi army that its streets are strewn with roadside bombs planted to impede US and Iraqi security forces.

A top US general said Monday that American and Iraqi forces plan to stay put in a southern sector of Baghdad's Sadr City rather than push deeper into the Shiite bastion.

There are "no plans to go beyond where we are," said Major General Jeffery Hammond, commander of US forces in Baghdad.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP on Sunday that the operations launched more than a week ago would carry on until the sprawling district in eastern Baghdad is entirely cleared of Shiite gunmen.

But Hammond said the main aim of the push into Sadr City was to stop lethal rocket attacks from Sadr City into the heavily-fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and US embassy.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Iraqi traffic patrol officer stands next to the remains of a Katyusha rocket in Baghdad.

AFP