Allawi vows to crush Iraqi insurgents

"These are isolated incidents," said Iyad Allawi. "We are going to defeat them...We have been expecting this escalation and we are expecting more escalation in the days ahead."

Three US soldiers were among those killed in Thursday's bold assaults on Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and the mainly Sunni Muslim cities of Baquba, Falluja and Ramadi.

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Iraq's third largest city Mosul was the worst hit, with four suicide bombings killing 62 people, including a US soldier, and wounding 220, a senior military official said.

He said the attacks showed signs of loose coordination between groups intent on destabilizing Iraq and warned of more bloodshed before and after the June 30 handover, when US-led occupation formally ends and Allawi's government takes over.

Allawi told reporters late Thursday he believed Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, was behind the Mosul bombings.

He blamed Baathists loyal to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein for the attacks in Ramadi and Baquba.

A group led by Zarqawi, who Washington says has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement on an Islamist Web site.

"Your brothers in Jama'at al-Tawhid and Jihad launched a wide assault in several governorates in the country which included strikes against the apostate police agents and spies and the Iraq army, alongside their American brothers," it said.

Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for the beheadings of an American and a South Korean hostage in Iraq, threatened Wednesday to assassinate Allawi.

A CIA official in Washington said Thursday the voice on the audiotaped message was probably Zarqawi's.

Some of the black-clad gunmen who attacked police and government buildings in Baquba proclaimed loyalty to Zarqawi and wore yellow headbands linking them to his group.