A spokesman for the Diwaniya general hospital said 34 bodies had been brought in - 25 Iraqi soldiers, seven civilians and two militiamen. He said at least 70 people were injured.

Local leaders are quoted as saying the gunmen in Diwaniya have split from the from the Mehdi Army after rejecting a call from their radical leader to take part in Iraq's political peace process.

In Baghdad, dozens of people were injured in the mid-morning blast outside the interior ministry.

The ministry complex has been frequently targeted in the past and is heavily guarded. At least eight policemen are reported to be among the fatalities.

'Improved security'

Insurgents have carried out almost daily attacks against Iraqi and coalition targets since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Thousands of Iraqis have died in apparently sectarian attacks in the past four months alone.

The bloodshed undermines Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's claim on Sunday that the security situation in Iraq was improving.

"The violence is on the decrease, and our security ability is increasing," Mr Maliki told CNN.

The bomber struck as UK Defence Minister Des Browne was in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi officials.

After meeting Iraqi Defence Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, Mr Browne said Iraq was moving forward.

"Each time I come, I see more progress," he said.

Meanwhile, five US soldiers were killed in two separate bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday afternoon, the US military said.

Four soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle north of Baghdad, a military statement said.

A fifth soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in the west of the capital.

The Haditha Dam is in a hostile stretch of the Euphrates River 140 miles northwest of Baghdad where the marines do battle with insurgents in the oppressive heat. But for a few hours this summer, the chow hall inside the dam was transformed into a theater for five shapely dancers who seemed to embody many a young marine's fantasy.

It was all part of a program to keep up morale in a war that is more dangerous than ever. There is a long history of providing entertainment for troops in war zones, including performances by attractive starlets. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell toured with Bob Hope in Korea, who delighted troops during four conflicts. Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret performed in Vietnam.

But at Haditha Dam, the marines have the Purrfect Angelz, as the dancers are known. Their tours, which organizers say are paid for by the military, have occasionally stirred some controversy. During the group's 2005 visit to Baghdad, a female Air Force officer complained that the dancers' wardrobes and routines encouraged insensitive attitudes toward women in the military.

On the group's third tour of Iraq, there were no complaints from the boisterous crowd of male marines at the dam or the solitary soldier in the audience from Azerbaijan, who mistook the Oklahoma-born Tanea for a Russian. A small group of Iraqi Army officers who are being trained by the marines were so enthusiastic they all but rushed the stage and filled their digital cameras with this sampling of American culture.

Sgt. Dale Gooden, 31, a Marine reservist from Jacksonville, Fla., who is assigned to the dam security unit, saw the show as a sign that the American public had not forgotten about the troops. The most impressive part of the show, he said, was "just the fact that they came out here to see us."

Certainly, Haditha Dam seems an unlikely venue. The 10-story hydroelectric dam, which was built in the 1980's, was captured in the opening weeks of the American-led invasion. The secret Delta Force destroyed much of the Iraqi defenses near the dam, while Army Rangers swooped in later to seize the structure.

The Americans said the dam had to be taken to prevent Saddam Hussein from destroying it as part of a scorched-earth policy, though there is no indication that Mr. Hussein ever had such a plan. It was a firefight at the dam, in fact, that initially put it at risk. After discovering that the poorly maintained dam was damaged in the fighting, a sergeant in an Army civil affairs unit flew to the site and worked with the Iraqi engineers to keep the dam functioning.

During a multimillion-dollar repair project by the Army Corps of Engineers, the dam's turbines were rehabilitated. In addition to generating electricity, the dam also serves as a headquarters for the Marine battalion that is charged with securing the Haditha area and is home to a small contingent of troops from Azerbaijan who are helping the marines guard the structure.

For the Purrfect Angelz, it was a stop on a tour that also took them to bases like Al Qaim and Taji. The dancers, former cheerleaders, calendar models and aspiring actresses, have an active schedule in the United States, much of which consists of events for motorcycle riders. By design, the routines at Haditha are a bit tamer than the biker fare.

"We want to make it more about talent than being risqué," Tanea Brooks said. "We are not going to boost every part of the morale." Her credits include a three-year stint as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, a role in a country music video, "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Trace Adkins, and a turn as quarterback for the New York Euphoria, one of the teams that established the Lingerie Football League, in which models played football dressed in underwear.

But for marines who deploy for seven months at a stretch, are forbidden to consume alcohol, have no real opportunities for social interaction with the Iraqi population and routinely travel down roads seeded by roadside bombs, the performance was exciting enough. "Servicemen are our best audience," said Ms. Brooks, who gave her age as "21 forever." "They are so appreciative. We love touring for them. They always get excited."

[David Chavez, the president of Pro Sports MVP, which organized the tour, said that it was paid for by the military and that the expenses consisted of travel costs and small stipends. A Pentagon spokesman said he had no immediate information on what the tour cost or the financial arrangements.]

A recent show began with an entreaty by a diligent sergeant who saw the event as an opportunity to appeal to the marines to re-enlist. He was loudly shouted down. An announcer who was traveling with the dance group told the marines not to pay attention to news media reports that the American public did not support the war. The nation, she said, was solidly behind them.

Then the dancers, in revealing outfits, energetically performed dance routines that were more rousing than most Super Bowl halftime acts - wardrobe malfunctions notwithstanding - but far less provocative than Las Vegas shows. At one point, one of the Angelz sang Lee Greenwood's song "God Bless the USA," a veritable anthem for many of the troops.

The event wound up with the photo and autograph session. Then it was on to the next stop.

The troops' verdict on the tour seemed to be summed up by an e-mail message that an Army captain later sent the dancers from the base at Taji. He thanked them for helping to "make us forget about our jobs for a little while."

The deputy premier also told Reuters Iraq hoped its plans to attract investment and create jobs could stem a descent into civil war and that foreign leaders should back a U.N. economic package next month or face disaster for the entire Middle East.

Car bombs exploded in Baghdad, the town of Khallis north of the capital, the northern oil city of Kirkuk and Basra in the Shi'ite south, a day after Maliki secured a pledge from tribal leaders to help stamp out sectarian violence and defeat insurgents.

"Violence has decreased and our security ability is increasing. We are not in civil war and will never be in civil war," Maliki told CNN in a recorded interview on Sunday.

"What you see is an atmosphere of reconciliation."

In Khallis, a religiously mixed town, gunmen stormed a market and cafe, killing 16 people and wounding 25, police said.

In one of the worst attacks of the day, a bomb blew apart a minibus in a busy commercial road in central Baghdad, killing nine people and sending black smoke billowing into the air.

The minibus blast followed a car bomb attack on Iraq's best-selling newspaper, the government-owned al-Sabah, that killed two employees and badly damaged the building.

Editor-in-chief Falah al-Meshaal said the newspaper, part of the U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network that Sunni insurgents have attacked before, would be published as normal on Monday.

In potentially oil rich Basra, where Maliki has imposed a state of emergency to deal with increasing violence fueled by tensions between rival Shi'ite Muslim factions, seven people were killed by a motorcycle bomb in a market, officials said.

British troops are under mounting pressure in the southern oil hub. But London's new envoy to Iraq insisted on Sunday that, despite his predecessor's leaked view this month that civil war was a strong possibility, he was "optimistic" such an outcome could be avoided if Maliki could rally Iraqis behind him.

TORTURE SIGNS

Police said 20 bodies had been found in parts of Baghdad on Saturday. Some bore signs of torture and most had been killed by gunshots to the head, a typical feature of the sectarian bloodshed between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunni Arabs.

Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops have launched a major operation in Baghdad to pacify the capital. Violence claimed the lives of over 3,000 Iraqis in July, many of them in Baghdad.

Maliki won support for his reconciliation plan from the tribal leaders gathered in Baghdad on Saturday, but it is unclear how influential they will be among Iraqis increasingly turning to religious leaders for guidance.

No major Sunni guerrilla group has signed up to Maliki's plan and much of the violence now gripping the capital is the work of smaller groups on both sides of the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian divide. Sunnis say it is fueled by militias linked to parties within the prime minister's Shi'ite-dominated coalition.

Maliki's planned cabinet reshuffle would partly involve the political movement of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia has clashed repeatedly in recent weeks with U.S. and Iraqi forces, several political sources said.

A key player in the government, Sadr denies his militia runs some sectarian death squads.

"There will be a government reshuffle. There will be some changes in a number of cabinet portfolios," Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, the most senior Kurdish official in the cabinet, told Reuters in an interview.

Salih, the government's economy supremo, said the need to clamp down on sectarian and ethnic violence would not distract him from working to develop Iraq's vast potential oil wealth. Restoring prosperity could help rein in the killing, he said.

"Undeniably security has to rank at the top," said Salih, the most senior ethnic Kurd in the cabinet. "But does that mean at the expense of the economy and services? You cannot. All these things are inter-related.."

Salih said success in Iraq would have good consequences for the region and the rest of the world.

"God forbid, failure in Iraq will be disastrous for everybody, not just for the people of Iraq," he said.

Details painted the larger picture. Local resentment had boiled into anger when British soldiers entered a mosque to make arrests. Insurgents, clearly loyal to Sadr, began shelling the British base, Camp Abu Naji, which had 1,200 soldiers and was on the border of Iran. In simple language, the British withdrew from the camp, which was looted when they left, so clearly the withdrawal was less than orderly. The decision may have been encouraged by the fact that "the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade mutinied".

In the British military dictionary this was called "repositioning". In the Arabic military dictionary this is called "defeat".

The story went on to say that local Arabs of Amarah called on Sadr's soldiers all day to congratulate them on their victory. And just in case you were wondering, Moqtada Sadr was one of the leaders who were instrumental in the formation of the present government in Baghdad.

Are you confused enough, or would you like some more information?

The only stark, non-confusing facts on the Post page were in the list of American dead that was placed just beside the story, based on a Pentagon notification. There were seven more American names, bringing the total of American deaths to 2,617. On the Op-Ed page, columnist David Ignatius reported from Baghdad that in July more than 1,500 Iraqis had died in Baghdad alone. He added, however, that tough action by the Americans had led to a marked improvement. Far fewer Iraqis were dying.

The British retreat from Amarah is not the beginning of the end. That would be an exaggeration. But, as was remarked of a different war, this does seem to be the end of the beginning.

It is an assessment that suits Washington as much as Baghdad. You get a strong sense that the beginning that George Bush made, along with Tony Blair, five years ago in Afghanistan and three years ago in Iraq has come to an end, and they do not know which way to turn. Bush and Blair look deflated. Their faces are tense, not intense.

The question was always dominant, but is now consuming America: Why are American troops in Iraq? What precisely is their mission statement? Surely America has not made this huge investment in men, money and national credibility in order to become the policeman of a chaotic Baghdad?

Bush's answers change as regularly as the seasons. He now thrusts his jaw in the vague direction of television cameras and asserts that American troops will never leave Iraq under his watch, that he will never cut and run. Why? Because the job is not finished. What is the job? If he does not kill terrorists in Iraq, he says, they will come to America to kill Americans.

Unfortunately, where Bush sees terror, most Americans see quicksand.

This narrative cannot be propelled even by the discovery of plots by British intelligence. The 9/11 Commission has now debunked one of the key arguments that took Bush to Iraq, by clearly stating that there was no link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. Bush has responded with an unbelievable assertion, that he never said so. Certainly Dick Cheney did, when he alleged that Mohammad Atta had met an Iraqi intelligence agent. You can perhaps get away skating on such thin ice when the voter gives you the benefit of the doubt. It was benefit of doubt that re-elected Bush. But now the doubts have multiplied, and the benefit is streaming in the opposite direction.

Bush still has loyalists who sincerely believe that he did not lie before his Iraq misadventure; but they now concede that he was misled. The distinction is not going to be very clear to the thousands upon thousands of young men, both Iraqi and American, who have died because Bush was either deceived, or he deceived the world. The difference is going to be lost on those Iraqis who were tortured and raped and killed during this war without a mission, as America's finest journalists are revealing in news reports and books of chilling horror, like the just-published bestseller, Fiasco. Inevitably, the price of war has reached the American middle class: Through daily images on television, through a deficit that has crossed $5 trillion, through gas prices that have jumped and house prices that have dropped. The middle class has kept Bush and the Republicans in power, and there are increasing signs that it is no longer buying the Bush narrative.

For five years Bush and Blair have rather enjoyed their leap into history. Suddenly, in the last few weeks, the politics of the rebound has reached their doorstep. Blair might have the easier journey as he exits that doorstep, for the parliamentary system has sufficient flexibility for change. By next summer, unless he is blessed by extraordinary luck, Blair will be an ex-prime minister. Bush will not be ex-president till January 2009, but by next summer he just might be wishing that America had a parliamentary system and he could retire to his ranch. If the Democrats win even one of the two Houses of Congress this November, they will start impeachment proceedings against Bush for misleading America into the septic morass of a war without horizons.

When the objective keeps changing, so does the definition of victory. American soldiers have been more confused than clear in the various campaigns of Iraq, since no one knows who is an enemy and who is a friend.

America is beginning to recognize the price, but the greater cost will of course be borne by Iraq and the region. The war that has been restarted is one without either boundaries or mercy, since the fire that is heating this cauldron is wild. All we need is a few more noble intentions, like the current favorite of some American policymakers: To divide Iraq into three independent nations, for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

The day a Kurdistan begins to look possible, Syria, Iran and Turkey will send their armies to smash the thought. They will not be squeamish about the blood they will shed. The Kurds are living so far in a zone of calm, but it is the calm of a dead sea.

What options does Bush have? The best option is the most obvious. All the nations of the region, who are staring at a growing disaster, need to sit at a table to discuss what can be saved from this wreck. America needs to be at this table as well, along with France and Russia, and Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. America can bomb rock and sand, draw blood each day from the shadows and comfort itself with passing lullabies, but will not bring peace. Peace will come through collective will and this can only be determined when nation-profiling ends, and diplomacy begins.

Guarded by a dozen gangly cranes, the site in the heart of the Green Zone is floodlit by night and is so removed from Iraqi reality that its entire construction force is foreign.

After almost four years, the Americans still can't turn on the lights for the Iraqis, but that won't be a problem for the embassy staffers. The same with the toilets - they will always flush on command. All services for the biggest embassy in the world will operate independently from the rattletrap utilities of the Iraqi capital.

Scheduled for completion next June, this is the only US reconstruction project in Iraq that is on track. Costing more than $US600 million ($A787 million), the fortress is bigger than the Vatican. It dwarfs the edifices of Saddam's wildest dreams and irritates the hell out of ordinary Iraqis.

On a recent visit to the real Baghdad - outside the Green Zone - a deepening sectarian separation was evident. Abu Zaman, a Shiite trucker who often updates The Age on life in the capital, had some personal news: "My daughter is upset because I blocked her wedding plans," he said. "He was a nice boy - rich and a good job - but he was a Sunni."

Making fake identity papers is a thriving business as Shiites and Sunnis attempt to blur their allegiances in a city where a name can be a death sentence. Men called Ali, Jaafar and Haider are almost certainly Shiites. Omar, Marwan and Khalid are Sunni names.

Shiite taxi driver Salwan al-Robian was unlucky. Earlier this month he used false papers to get through a Sunni checkpoint south of Baghdad. His companions told The Age that he gave himself away by invoking the name of Imam Ali, the Shiite saint, when he exclaimed his good fortune in surviving the roadblock. The Sunni gunman heard him and he was dragged off. His family recovered his body from the Tigris River a few days later.

Sunni graffiti artists daub city walls with slogans such as "Shiite families out" and "Shiite dogs". Meanwhile, Shiite men roar with laughter at DVDs of comics mocking Sunnis.

In Baghdad, all roads lead to the morgue. This building to the north of the city comes from the pages of Dante.

It reveals the unvarnished truth about this deepening conflict. The body count rises steadily: more than 1800 mutilated corpses were trucked in from across the capital in July, a significant increase on the June toll of almost 1600. Across the country, almost 3200 Iraqis died violent deaths in June.

Coping with this flood of suicide-bombing and mass-murder victims is an impossible task for morgue staff. In the stifling summer, the police try to get out before sunrise to gather corpses from the killers' favourite dumping spots before the broiling heat of the day.

At the morgue, the bodies are divided along sectarian lines. The viciousness of the killings is sickening. Sunni victims of Shiite violence usually have holes drilled in their heads and joints and are found near the Shiite slums of Sadr City. Shiite victims of Sunni violence are often shot in the head or decapitated and usually they are dragged from the tepid waters of the Tigris.

Up to 200 bodies are delivered to the morgue each day. Sometimes there is the dignity of a body bag, but often body parts are delivered in banana boxes discarded at city bazaars. The Iraqi Government threatens the morgue staff with reprisals if they reveal information to reporters because the statistics are such devastating indicators of the Government's - and the United States' - failure. But one of the doctors agreed to talk to The Age as long as his name was not published. "It just gets worse, especially in this heat," he said.

"The bodies have been in the sun for so long that they fall apart in our hands, just like that. It's a nightmare. At home I can't say anything about it to my family. And how can we believe it'll get any better? We don't have enough doctors to do the autopsies and we're getting more and more bodies every day."

After almost four years of trying to build Washington's democracy beachhead in the Middle East, US defence officials now concede that the violence in Iraq is at its worst - in terms of body count, public support and the ease with which Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias exploit gaps in the American forces.

At most critical points the Americans have misread the social, tribal, political and military landscape and they have wrong-footed themselves by denying evolving realities that were all too apparent.

Distrust of Washington in all of the Iraqi factions has robbed the US of what it believed was an easily won regional trump card: control of Baghdad. Iraq is a democracy in name only. The elected Parliament doesn't function and, even though they mouth support for the niceties of the democratic process, it is hard not to conclude that Iraqi leaders have more faith in achieving their goals by letting the violence run than by taking part in any US-managed national dialogue.

The dynamic has changed. Sunnis who campaigned for US forces to leave Iraq now insist they remain here to protect the Sunnis because the Shiite majority has a taste for blood.

Shiites who welcomed the Americans now declare the US to be an enemy bent on robbing them of their long-held dream of controlling the country.

It's remarkable that George Bush has reportedly waited until now to vent his frustration at the failure of the Iraqis "to appreciate the sacrifice the US has made in Iraq". Ironically, about the same time as the August 14 White House meeting at which the President wondered aloud about the ability of yet another Iraqi government to turn the tide of violence, a Baghdad factory owner was mimicking the American leader for the benefit of The Age: "We give them Pepsi, the internet and mobile phones and they're still not happy. What more do they want?"

The combined forces of the US and the Iraqi Government number more than 400,000, but the country remains a lawless jungle. The Americans say they kill or capture more than 500 insurgents a week and they are defusing twice as many roadside bombs now as they were in January. But Iraqi and other agencies estimate that the death toll since the March 2003 invasion stands at 50,000 or more - the proportional equivalent of about 570,000 Americans.

In a country trying to rebuild itself, there is another disturbing development: more than 40 per cent of its professional classes have fled since the invasion. That includes an estimated 12,000 doctors.

The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants estimates that close to 900,000 Iraqis have fled since 2003. Iraqi Airways has more than doubled flights to Damascus, bus services on the treacherous desert route to Jordan have gone from two to 50 a day, and taxi fares to Amman have increased from $US200 to $US750.

As statistics cry failure on so many fronts, Washington's stated plan for US forces in Iraq to "stand down as the new Iraqi forces stand up" is being shredded daily, along with the lives of innocent civilians. Much of the terror on the streets of Baghdad is organised by private militias that have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces.

These militias are operated by the key parties in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's administration - his government would fall without the political support of one of the worst offenders, the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.

In Basra, deep in the south, there is little Sunni insurgency activity. But there is much violence as Shiite militias and local warlords fight for turf and British and American officers accuse neighbouring Iran (Shiite) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni) of arming the factions.

The country's second-biggest city becomes more Islamicised by the day - music and

liquor shops have been bombed out of business, women are made to wear headscarves and board games are being outlawed.

Whatever the Americans have done in Iraq has usually been too little too late.

The June death in a US bombing raid of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Sunni insurgency leader and al-Qaeda point man in Iraq, was a victory - but his absence from the battlefield has failed to staunch the blood.

Zarqawi's stated objective was to foment unstoppable sectarian war.

In a sense, his work was done with the February bombing of a Shiite shrine at Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Unlike Mr Bush, Zarqawi could go to his grave rightly claiming: "Mission accomplished."

The two sides are dug in for the long haul. On one side, Sunni insurgency cells that now show great unity and common purpose have defeated a determined US counterinsurgency push to divide them.

On the other side, the Shiites use the resources of the US-trained and funded Iraqi security forces. A senior figure in Sadr's Mahdi Army told The Age: "We can get anything we need. We are a professional force ... and after the victory for Hezbollah in Lebanon we feel stronger and more powerful because we have seen what a Shiite force can achieve.

"We will fight the Sunni till they have a clean heart towards Shiites. But we have to fight the American too, because they are with the Sunni against us."

Rumsfeld's aides said they expected as many as 600 people to attend and to have a chance to ask questions.

Reporters who traveled with Rumsfeld from Washington, D.C., were not allowed at the session.

Asked why reporters would not be permitted to cover the event, Rumsfeld said he makes it a practice to make all family meetings private.

A newly formed Alaska chapter of the Military Families Speak Out group issued a statement in Fairbanks saying it would make a public call for the Bush administration to bring home the 172nd and all other U.S. troops. It quoted Jennifer Davis of Anchorage, whose husband belongs to the 172nd.

"I am totally frustrated, disappointed and heartbroken," she said in the statement. "Just when I thought we were going to be able to resume a 'normal' life and when I thought the nightmare was over, the nightmare was extended."

Rumsfeld said in the in-flight interview that the 172nd Brigade was an effective force during its nearly one-year deployment to the Mosul area in northern Iraq.

He said the soldiers performed well in the short time since they shifted to Baghdad as part of an effort by U.S. commanders to quell sectarian killings.

"They did a terrific job in Mosul and they're already doing an excellent job in Baghdad," said Rumsfeld, indicating that commanders chose to extend the 172nd Brigade in part because of their extensive experience in Iraq.

The brigade's tour was extended by up to 120 days, bringing them close to a Christmas return date.

Rumsfeld said he would make no promises that the full brigade would be back home by the holidays.

"I'd love to be Santa Claus. I'm not," he told reporters during the flight to Fairbanks.

Officials have said that two of the men arrested on Monday were among seven people who escaped from the Malaz detention center in Riyadh in June.

Saturday's statement said weapons and locally-made explosives were found in the Jeddah apartment.

"They were using the flat as a hide-out and as a factory for instruments of death and destruction," it said. It did not specify when the other 30 men were arrested but said they had been under surveillance in recent weeks.

Officials say more than 136 militants and 150 foreigners and Saudis, including security forces, have died in attacks and clashes with police since May 2003, when suicide bombers hit three Western housing compounds in Riyadh.

The violent campaign by supporters of al Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden has ebbed in the face of toughened security measures.

King Abdullah said in comments published on Saturday that he had personally intervened to ensure that the lives of militants -- who he called "rascals," using an Arabic word normally used to refer to naughty children -- were spared in the Jeddah siege.

The comments in an interview with the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat suggested that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is increasingly confident that it has tamed the 3-year-old militant campaign to depose the U.S.-allied royals.

The blast ripped through a crowded bazaar in the town of Lashkar Gah.

A spokesman for the provincial governor told the Associated Press news agency that the bomber had blown himself up opposite a police station.

Helmand province has seen some of the worst of the violence that has killed hundreds in Afghanistan this year.

At least 47 people were wounded in the latest blast, six of them critically, Hanif Khan, a local hospital official, told the Associated Press news agency.

Shattered glass and blood-soaked turbans were scattered at the site of the bomb, AP quoted security guard Hayatullah Khan as saying.

Insurgency

Afghanistan is going through its bloodiest period since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.

Militants recently stepped up their insurgency against government and foreign forces in the south and east.

About 2,000 people, most of them militants, but also civilians, aid workers, Afghan forces and more than 90 foreign soldiers have been killed this year.

Last week, US-led forces killed seven men and a child in a raid in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.

The coalition forces said the men were suspected al-Qaeda members, but local people told the BBC that the men were tribal elders who had gathered to resolve a local dispute.