Bombs kill 34 in Baghdad, 3 UK troops in Basra

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb killed 25 people on Thursday at a busy intersection in Baghdad where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers, while 20 beheaded bodies were found on a river bank south of the capital, Iraqi police said.

Another car bomb in Baghdad targeting motorists queuing for petrol killed five people, police said. Mortar bombs also killed four people in two separate neighborhoods in the city.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and wounded another, the British military said.

The latest attacks underscore the strength of militants in Iraq despite the arrival of 28,000 additional U.S. troops. The unrelenting violence is pushing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

U.S. and Iraqi officials blame most major car bombings on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

While the group has a strong foothold in Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that the interrogation of captured al Qaeda operatives showed the network was also planning attacks in a number of other countries.

Maliki made the comments in a speech to anti-terrorism officials in Baghdad, a statement from his office said.

"The prime minister ... warned of a widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al Qaeda organization to target a number of countries which suffer religious and sectarian problems," the statement said, without naming any countries.

"The confessions by members of al Qaeda captured in Iraq uncovered a plan to cause panic and insecurity in those countries."

The deadliest car bomb in Baghdad exploded in the Shi'ite district of Bayaa. The blast, which went off during the morning rush hour, wounded 40 people and destroyed dozens of vehicles.

"It was a horrible explosion. Many, many people have been killed," said witness Aqeel Kadhim, saying pickup trucks and ambulances rushed to take away the dead and wounded.

The blast dug a huge crater where the minibuses parked.

Residents could be seen searching the burned out minibuses for bodies. Corpses, some charred beyond recognition, lay twisted on the ground.

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are engaged in an offensive against al Qaeda in an attempt to take down its car bomb networks, which have killed and maimed thousands of Iraqis.

GRUESOME DISCOVERY

In the Sunni Arab town of Salman Pak south of Baghdad, locals made the gruesome discovery of 20 beheaded men on the bank of the River Tigris, police said.

All the victims were wearing civilian clothes and had their hands and legs bound, police said, adding some of the heads could not be found. Iraqi police had cordoned off the area.

Beheadings are a common tactic used by radical Sunni groups such as al Qaeda, but the discovery of such large numbers of victims in one group is rare. Police had no information on the possible motive or exactly where the men were from.

The British soldiers in Basra were on foot at the time of the blast in the southeast of the city, spokesman Major David Gell said. They were part of a routine convoy heading out of Basra and had dismounted from their armored vehicles.

Foreign soldiers in Iraq increasingly get out in areas known to be mined with roadside bombs to reduce the risk of more casualties should a big blast hit a single vehicle carrying a number of troops.

The blast came a day after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as Britain's prime minister. Blair's rule ended with his popularity badly dented by the 2003 Iraq war.

More than 150 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Waleed Ibrahim and Mussab Al-Khairalla)