Bombs kill 3 British troops in Basra

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb killed 25 people on Thursday at a busy intersection in Baghdad where minibuses pick up and drop off passengers, while 20 beheaded bodies were found on a river bank south of the capital, Iraqi police said.

Another car bomb in Baghdad targeting motorists queuing for petrol killed five people, police said. Mortar bombs also killed four people in two separate neighbourhoods in the city.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and wounded another, the British military said.

The latest attacks underscore the strength of militants in Iraq despite the arrival of 28,000 additional U.S. troops. The unrelenting violence is pushing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

U.S. and Iraqi officials blame most major car bombings on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

While the group has a strong foothold in Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that the interrogation of captured al Qaeda operatives showed the network was also planning attacks in a number of other countries.

Maliki made the comments in a speech to anti-terrorism officials in Baghdad, a statement from his office said.

"The prime minister ... warned of a widespread and dangerous plan by the terrorist al Qaeda organisation to target a number of countries which suffer religious and sectarian problems," the statement said, without naming any countries.