A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Baghdad kebab restaurant popular with police and Iraqi soldiers Sunday, killing at least 23 people and injuring more than a dozen others as insurgents showed no signs of slackening their onslaught despite two major US offensives aimed at routing foreign fighters.

The attack took place 2:45 PM around lunchtime at Zarzour, one of Baghdad's most popular restaurants, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said. Many injured were taken to Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital, he added.

The explosion occurred about 400 yards from the main gate of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, a section of Baghdad that contains the Iraqi government and US and British embassies. All that remained of the bomber was his head, an arm and one leg.

Militants killed a total of at least 17 around the country Sunday and seemed undeterred by two joint US-Iraqi offensives — Operations Spear and Dagger. They began earlier this week and seek to destroy militant networks — one near the Syrian border and another north of Baghdad.

Nearly 60 insurgents have been killed and 100 captured so far in the campaigns, the military said. Three Americans have been wounded.

In other insurgent violence, a suicide car bomber killed two Iraqi soldiers and two civilians at a military operations center in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad, Army Capt. Muhanad Ahmed said. The civilians killed were employees at the security checkpoint.

The wounded included eight soldiers and four civilians, Ahmed said. Civilians were at the checkpoint because construction workers were fixing the gate.

Another car bomb parked near the Shiite al-Nawab mosque in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah exploded, killing one civilian and wounding 26 others, police Maj. Falah al-Muhammadawi said. One policeman was seriously injured.

Meanwhile, Marines and Iraqi soldiers battled insurgents as part of Operation Spear, in its third day in the desert town of Karabilah, an outpost in western Anbar province near the Syrian border.

Troops fired Hellfire missiles overnight at two homes where insurgents holed up after shooting mortars at coalition forces, said Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, who commands the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. The military said they believed four or five militants may have been killed in the counterattack.

Intelligence officials believe Anbar province is a portal used by extremist groups, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group, to smuggle in foreign fighters. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile border with Iraq.

On Thursday, a US general called Syria's border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq.

The majority of the region's residents are Sunni Muslims, who are thought to make up the core of an insurgency that has killed at least 1,123 people since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led government was announced April 28.

US and Iraqi forces carrying loudspeakers have been shouting out to Karabilah's residents to leave their homes with white flags for a safer part of the dusty town, 200 miles west of Baghdad.

The 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers taking part in Operation Spear have found that most of the town's homes are already empty, said Marine Capt. Christopher Goland of Lima Company, a unit of the 3rd Battalion.

Dozens of buildings in Karabilah were destroyed after airstrikes and tank shelling, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

On Saturday, troops searching the town found four Iraqi hostages beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall in a torture center, the military said. Some of the men were believed to be Iraqi border guards. Troops searching the bunker found nooses, electrical wire and a bathtub filled with water for electric shocks and mock drownings.

US and Iraqi forces also found a bomb-making factory. It contained blasting caps, cell phones and other materials to make roadside and car bombs. They uncovered sniper rifles, ammunition and a mortar system. A nearby schoolhouse believed to be used for training terrorists had instructions for making roadside bombs written on a chalkboard.

Operation Dagger, a second offensive of similar size, was launched Saturday, targeting the marshy shores of a lake north of Baghdad. Dagger seeks to eliminate insurgent training camps and weapons caches in the Lake Tharthar area, 53 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Both operations come on the heels of two other major offensives in the same areas that killed about 125 militants earlier this month and in March.

But the western region has been flush with militant fighters in recent weeks. Insurgents in the area killed 21 people, believed to be missing Iraqi soldiers, whose bodies were found June 10.

Iraqi troops did not participate in earlier offensives in the area. This time, they fought alongside the Americans and used their language skills and local knowledge to spot foreign fighters, said Col. Bob Chase, chief of operations for the Second Marine Division.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed two Iraqi policemen in western Baghdad as they headed to work, while a second band of gunmen killed an electrical engineer who was on his way to work at an oil refinery in the Iraqi capital.

Two mortar rounds meant for the governor's building in central Mosul — 225 miles northwest of Baghdad — missed and landed at a butcher's market, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding 14 others, hospital officials said.

A series of clashes left at least one person dead and two wounded in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

(Chinadaily.com June 20, 2005)