BAGHDAD - At least 10 people were killed and 25 wounded in a series of car bombings in Baghdad on Thursday, the third day in a surge in insurgent violence in the Iraqi capital.

Smoke rises from a destroyed police vehicle shortly after a bomb attack in Baghdad, January 18, 2007. At least four people were killed and another 10 wounded on Thursday when a car bomb exploded in a busy street in central Baghdad, police sources said. [Reuters]

Three bombs in quick succession killed at least six people and wounded 15 in a wholesale vegetable market in the violent southern district of Dora, police said. Earlier, a car bomb in Saadoun Street, a commercial thoroughfare in the city centre, killed four people and wounded 10.

There has been a surge of violence this week as the Iraqi government prepares to launch a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad, seen as a last chance to save Iraq from descending into an all-out civil war.

Iraqi officials have said they were worried that a failure of the plan would also see the end of U.S. support as President George W. Bush would be forced to change course.

Bush tried to shore up support within his Republican party for his strategy to send about 21,500 extra U.S. troops to Iraq to stabilise Baghdad and Anbar province.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, told the Times newspaper in comments published on Thursday that Iraq's need for U.S. troops could fall in three to six months if the United States equipped Iraqi security forces with sufficient weapons.

"I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the U.S. so we don't give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success," he said.

The United Nations said earlier this week that more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence last year. The Iraqi government has previously called U.N. data exaggerated.

BLOODY DAYS

At least 15 people were killed on Wednesday when a bomb ripped through a crowded market in Sadr City, a poor Shi'ite district in northeast Baghdad.

On Tuesday, at least 105 people were killed in bombings and a shooting in the capital, including 70 at a Baghdad university not far from Sadr City. Maliki blamed supporters of Saddam Hussein who was hanged on December 30. Two Saddam aides, one of them his half-brother, were hanged on Monday.

Sadr City is the stronghold of the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and blamed for most of the sectarian killing by death squads in Baghdad. Iraqi officials have said that the Baghdad security plan was aimed at crushing the Mehdi Army and other militias.

With polls showing most Americans oppose the troop build-up, some senators from the Republican and Democratic sides unveiled a nonbinding resolution opposing the increase, although Bush has vowed not to be swayed by Congress or public criticism.

Maliki was quoted by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper as criticising Bush for complaining about the manner of Saddam's execution and saying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was helping "terrorists" by noting publicly that political problems could cost Maliki his job.

"It seems to me that Bush has given in to domestic pressure," Maliki said of Bush's criticism this week that his government had "fumbled" the hanging of Saddam, which was marred by Shi'ite officials making sectarian jibes, captured on video.

"Maybe he has lost control of the situation," the prime minister added, saying Bush was normally a strong character.

Of Rice, he was quoted as saying: "I would advise Condoleezza Rice to avoid statements that may aid terrorists."