Four suicide attacks kill at least 71

BAGHDAD, Wednesday (Reuters) Suicide bombs killed at least 71 people in Iraq on Wednesday, taking to nearly 400 the number of Iraqis killed in guerrilla attacks since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago.

In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi'ite migrant labourers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work.

Police said at least 33 people were killed and 80 wounded in the attack, one of the day's four suicide bombings.

A policeman at the scene of the blast in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said the explosion was near a police station but the target was the crowd of workers. "What I saw was a tragedy," said Ibrahim Mohammed, a migrant worker from the town of Kut who witnessed the blast. "Some people had their heads torn off by the explosion, some were burned, some were ripped to pieces."

Iraqi militant group Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the bombing in an Internet statement, saying the migrant labourers were working at nearby U.S. bases. It said the workers were "apostates who sold their religion and became slaves and agents of the crusaders".

Mainly Sunni guerrillas have often targeted Shi'ites, sparking fears they are trying to stoke sectarian civil war.

In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an army recruitment centre and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said. A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. Police said the bomber was trying to reach the police station but blew up his car before he got there.

A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, officials at the Interior Ministry said. Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, killing three soldiers, police said. And a mortar round hit the Oil Ministry in Baghdad but there were no casualties. Insurgents have launched a blitz of attacks since Iraq's political leaders announced a new cabinet on April 28. Insurgents have also snatched two more foreign hostages - an Australian engineer captured in Baghdad in late April and a Japanese security contractor seized on Sunday in western Iraq.

The captors of Australian hostage Douglas Wood, 63, demanded that Australia pull its troops out of Iraq by Tuesday.

Canberra insisted it would not negotiate with kidnappers and the deadline passed with no word on his fate.

Last week, Wood's captors released video footage showing him looking distraught as two masked gunmen pointed rifles at him. His head had been shaven and he appeared to have a black eye.

The Japanese hostage, 44-year-old Akihiko Saito, was captured when a foreign security convoy was ambushed in western Iraq on Sunday evening. Army of Ansar al-Sunna, one of Iraq's most feared insurgent groups, said it was holding Saito. Japanese media said Saito was a 20-year veteran of the French Foreign Legion and had spent two years in Japan's army.

Ansar al-Sunna has killed scores of hostages, including foreigners from countries with no connection to the Iraq war. Last August, the group killed 12 Nepalese migrant workers, beheading one and then riddling the others with bullets.

Insurgents have also kidnapped the Iraqi governor of the rebellious western province of Anbar and are demanding that his tribe release captured fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al Qaeda network in Iraq.