At least 26 people were killed in fresh violence on the western outskirts of Baghdad and in the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk Monday, police and medics said.

In Monday's bloodiest attack, at least 16 people were killed when men dressed in Iraqi military uniforms attacked members of a Sunni Arab tribe in the village of Zaidan, in the Abu Ghraib area on the western edge of Baghdad, police and villagers said.

Villagers and local police said that men wearing Iraqi army uniforms - but driving civilian cars - attacked a cluster of houses in the village early Monday morning.

Leading members of the local government-allied Sahwa, or 'Awakening,' militia and the Iraqi Islamic Party were among those killed, they said.

Local medics said that at least five of the victims had also been beheaded.

The Iraqi Islamic Party said armed men had abducted the victims, all from the Zuba tribe, from their homes, took them to a nearby cemetery, and then 'brutally executed' them.

'The Iraqi Islamic Party strongly condemns this heinous crime,' it said, calling it 'a worrisome indicator portending the return of the situation to what it was before,' and calling on the Iraqi presidency and cabinet to intervene.

'The hand that perpetrated these crimes sought to send the region back to instability and conflict,' the party said.

Police and medics first said 13 people had been confirmed dead, but Namir Mohammed, a member of the local city council, Monday afternoon told DPA that police had discovered three more bodies, bringing the total number of dead to 16.

'We have preliminary information that the criminals who carried out this crime were from the area,' Iraqi military spokesman Qassim Atta said.

'Arrest warrants have been issued for (those) named by locals during the initial investigation this morning,' he said.

'The perpetrators will be punished,' he vowed, saying a high-level committee had been formed to investigate the incident. 'Security forces will be held accountable if they are found to have been involved in this crime.'

At least five others were killed and at least 12 injured in two apparently unrelated blasts Monday morning, police in Baghdad added.

At least two people were killed and six injured in a bomb blast in the Sid al-Halib district, police said, and at least three others were killed and six injured when an ammunition stockpile exploded in the neighbourhood of al-Qara Ghoul.

In the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, at least five people were killed and at least 10 more injured when a powerful car bomb ripped through the Khan al-Tamir market in the centre of the city, police there said.

It was Monday's second bombing in the region, which has long been the centre of a tense political standoff between Kurdish politicians

- many of whom hope to make Kirkuk the capital of a future independent state - and Arab and Turkmen politicians, who view the city and its nearby oil fields as integral parts of Iraq.

Earlier in the day, one Iraqi soldier was wounded when a bomb planted by the side of the road exploded as his patrol passed through the Tuz Khurmato district, some 80 km to the south of Kirkuk.

Following that explosion, police said they had arrested five people from the area on suspicion of involvement with the attack.

Some 40 km to the north of the city, on the road between the northern cities of Kirkuk and Arbil, two Iraqi civilians were killed and one US private security contractor was injured in a traffic collision Monday, General Sarhad Qadir said.

Iraqi lawmakers last week approved an elections law to cover voting in parliamentary elections now scheduled for Jan 18, after weeks of debate over voting in the disputed region.

Lawmakers from both sides of the debate initially welcomed the compromise, but Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim, Sunday said he would veto the law in its current form if more seats were not allocated to expatriate Iraqis, many of whom are Sunni Muslims, throwing the law's future into doubt.

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