A car bomb killed three Iraqi National Guards and wounded five others in the northern city of Mosul Monday, underscoring a warning by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that Iraq's insurgency was worsening. 

In fresh attacks against Iraq's beleaguered security forces aimed at destabilizing the interim government, insurgents detonated the bomb near a National Guard patrol in Mosul, 390 kilometers north of Baghdad. Three civilians were also wounded.

Earlier yesterday, insurgents fired five mortar rounds near a police academy in eastern Baghdad but there were no reports of any casualties or damage, the Interior Ministry said.

The attacks came a day after Powell's warning, which linked the growing militancy to elections scheduled in Iraq for January.

"We are fighting an intense insurgency," he said on ABC's "This Week" program. "Yes, it's getting worse, and the reason it's getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election."

Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy also said that the Bush administration's failure to shut down al-Qaeda and rebuild Iraq have fueled the insurgency and made the United States more vulnerable to a nuclear attack by terrorists.

In a speech prepared for delivery at George Washington University yesterday, Kennedy said that by shifting attention from Osama bin Laden to Iraq, Bush has increased the danger of a "nuclear 9/11."

Also yesterday, US planes fired at rebel positions in the eastern Baghdad Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, residents and doctors said.

A doctor at one Sadr City hospital said an overnight air strike had killed one woman and two men.

Meanwhile, Paul Bigley, brother of Kenneth Bigley who is being held hostage by militants in Iraq, called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday to step up efforts to win the release of the hostage while criticizing Blair as a weak politician.

"Tony Blair is a gentleman and a statesman... but I am afraid his sell-by date has gone and he has to go. There has to be a change of face, a change of policy, a change of dialogue," Paul Bigley said in an interview with the BBC.

"He has not got the credibility to negotiate the purchase of a bicycle," he said, repeatedly criticizing Blair and the British Government for not doing enough to try and free his brother.

(China Daily September 28, 2004)