Sunday 12 December 2004, 21:10 Makka Time, 18:10 GMT
US bombing of the Iraqi city of Falluja is continuing while an aircraft has dropped a quarter-tonne bomb on
Mosul, leaving an unknown number of casualties in a battle that has also injured eight US soldiers.
The bombing came after clashes erupted between US forces and fighters in the eastern parts of Falluja.
An Iraqi journalist, Fadil al-Badrani, described the fighting as the fiercest in two weeks.
Columns of smoke have been seen rising from the areas of al-Askari, al-Shuhada, al-Sinai and al-Jubail, the journalist told Aljazeera.
Al-Badrani added that explosions have also been heard in several areas of the city.
The Iraqi Red Crescent has been unable to enter the neighbourhoods to distribute medical and food supplies.
Al-Badrani said some dead bodies were still lying in the city's streets.
Elsewhere, a car bomb rocked Arbil on Sunday, a city in Iraq's relatively northern Kurdish region, eyewitnesses said, wounding two people.
The attack was the first such in the city since 105 people were killed in two attacks in February this year.
Mosul bombing
In Mosul, a military spokesman said the action on Saturday came after fighters opposed to the US-back government attacked a US military patrol that was trying to seize an arms dump.
The fighters had set off a car bomb and then opened fire with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on the unit that moved on the arms cache. Troops later destroyed the weapons.
There was an "unknown number of enemy casualties" and eight soldiers were slightly wounded, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Hastings said.
Earlier in the day, another car bomb exploded near a US military convoy, wounding at least two passersby, witnesses and the US army said.
On Sunday, a car bomber attacked the US military in Iraq's volatile Anbar province, but caused no American casualties, a marines spokesman said.
The attack happened at about 10.30am (0730 GMT) on the road between Haditha and Rawah, about 250km northwest of Baghdad.
Senior officers killed
In other attacks across the country three high-ranking Iraqi police officers and seven Iraqi national guardsmen were among those killed.
The guardsmen were shot dead in the town of Hiyt in western Iraq when armed men ambushed their minibus, Captain Ahmad Jasim of the US-backed Iraqi force said. Three others were wounded.
In southern Baghdad, guerrillas assassinated a police brigadier and a colonel, a police source said.
Near the northern town of al-Sharqat, a police colonel was one of two officers killed in an ambush.
Three others, including another colonel, were wounded.
A police source said the brigadier and colonel killed in Baghdad worked at the interior ministry.
In the centre of the northern oil capital of Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded, badly damaging a US Humvee patrol vehicle and wounding two soldiers and an interpreter, the US military said, adding that the wounded were in a stable condition.
Security officials and civil servants have become prime targets for fighters opposed to the US military presence and to Iraqis working for the US-backed authorities.
There are fears violence may increase before elections scheduled for 30 January.
Kirkuk
In what will be a worrying sign for the interim government eager to pacify the country before the polls, election infrastructure is already coming under attack.
A bomb damaged an office for election workers in the town of Zab, southwest of Kirkuk, wounding a civilian, police said.
In other violence, four employees of the education ministry were wounded when the bus taking them to work in Baghdad was sprayed with gunfire.
A civilian motorist was wounded on the main highway between Hilla and Karbala, south of the capital, when a roadside bomb went off, missing a convoy of guardsmen, police said.