Amid the violence, Iraq?s President Jalal Talabani announced that parliament would hold its inaugural meeting on March 12 ? nearly three months after the general elections.

In the bloodiest attack, six Iraqis were killed and 27 wounded, including policemen, when a car bomb exploded against a police patrol in a market in the centre of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.

The mixed town of Baquba, 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the capital, has been targeted by nearly daily bomb attacks for several weeks.

In a separate rebel attack, three Shiites employed in a restaurant in the Sunni rebel bastion of Hawija, in northern Iraq, were killed when gunmen opened fire at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) in the restaurant.

Sheikh Tarekh Abdallah Ibrahim al-Obaidi of the powerful Obaidi tribe was also killed in a roadside bomb early yesterday in Hawija.

The town has invited the wrath of Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after tribes there declared war on him. In Baghdad at least two people, one a policeman, were killed and 11 wounded in a series of attacks, two of them involving car bombs.

Four mortar shells were fired at the Shiite district of Sadr City, but only one person was hurt, police said.

US soldier killed

The US military also announced yesterday the death of one of its soldiers on Sunday in a rebel attack in the western Al-Anbar province taking the total US military death toll since the March 2003 invasion to at least 2,304, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures

Meanwhile, leading human rights group Amnesty International charged that violations of human rights continued in Iraq at the hands of the coalition and Iraqi security forces.

Tens of thousands of people have been held ?arbitrarily? in Iraq since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003, creating a situation that is ripe for abuse, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Most of those held were neither charged nor faced trial and had no basic right to challenge their detention, it said as it launched a new report ?Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq?. The report details what AI calls ?human rights violations for which the US-led MNF (multi-national force) is directly responsible? as well as those increasingly committed by Iraqi security forces. ?The record of these forces, including US forces and their United Kingdom allies, is an unpalatable one,? they note.

Quoting coalition figures, AI said there were more than 14,000 security detainees in coalition custody at the end of November 2005.

President Jalal Talabani announced that Iraq?s first permanent post- Saddam Hussein parliament will convene on March 12.?I?ll be summoning today the leaders of parliamentary factions to inform them of the inaugural meeting of parliament to be held on March 12,? Talabani said on television.

The summoning of parliament has been delayed by bickering over the formation of the next government with Kurdish and Sunni parties demanding that the leading Shiite United Iraqi Alliance ditch outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and nominate another candidate to form the coalition cabinet. ?At the moment hectic work is on to topple Jaafari? a top government official familiar to the ongoing political negotiations told AFP. ?Opposition to him is growing,? he said.

National unity

The Kurdish group ? the most vocal to date in rejecting Jaafari ? has held talks with leading Shiite leaders, including revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Saturday to explain its stand.

?We reject Jaafari because we believe that Iraq needs a government of national unity and new faces,? said Barhem Saleh, planning minister and a close aide to Talabani, a Kurd.

Saleh said Sistani heard ?our arguments and underlined the need for continuing dialogues with other Iraqi factions,? after his surprise Saturday visit to the southern holy city of Najaf to meet the revered cleric.

Saleh also met radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, one of the Jaafari?s main backers in the ruling religious-based United Iraqi Alliance. ?Sadr insisted on national unity and on consolidating the bonds between the Iraqis,? said Saleh, adding however that Sadr vowed to continue supporting Jaafari.

The United Iraqi Alliance, which controls 128 of the 275 seats in parliament, selected Jaafari to serve as prime minister by just a one vote majority over vice president Adel Abdel Mahdi.

The Kurdish group has 53 seats in the new 275-seat parliament, the Sunni National Concord Front has 44, and the list of former premier Iyad Allawi controls 25.

Jaafari?s appointment must be confirmed by a three-man presidential council and he must win a vote of confidence in parliament once he has put together his cabinet.