BAGHDAD, 22 January 2005 — Two car bombs left over 20 dead in Iraq yesterday. A suicide bomber killed 14 Shiite worshippers as they left a Baghdad mosque, ratcheting up tension between’s Iraq’s religious communities just nine days before landmark elections.

Another car bomb exploded in a town just south of the capital, killing and wounding several people in a wedding party, police and survivors said. Survivors of the attack brought to a Baghdad hospital said more than a dozen people may have died. Police said it was too early to establish the exact toll.

In a sign of the insurgents’ confidence, a group beheaded an Iraqi soldier in broad daylight in the restive rebel town of Ramadi. They left the body, still dressed in army fatigues, in the street with the severed head placed on the torso and a note warning other Iraqi troops to quit.

And a video tape posted on the Internet by the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group led by Jordanian militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi showed two other Iraqis who said they worked at a US base having their heads cut off by militants.

Militants threatening to kill eight Chinese hostages said in a new videotape they would treat them “mercifully” if China, which opposed the US-led war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, banned all Chinese nationals from entering Iraq.

China responded by appealing to “friendship between the Chinese people and the Iraqi people” and pointed out it had already advised its nationals to leave Iraq.

The men, who came to Iraq in search of work, were abducted earlier this month. Their captors have threatened them with death unless Beijing explains what they were doing in Iraq.

Militants have stepped up violence ahead of Iraq’s first multiparty election in nearly half a century, scheduled for Jan. 30. They have also targeted the mosques of rival Muslims in what officials say is a bid to plunge Iraq into a sectarian civil war.

The Baghdad mosque bombing, timed to coincide with the feast of Eid Al-Adha, is the latest in a string of attacks targeting leaders, mosques and parties representing Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq’s population. The bomb, which exploded as the faithful finished praying, wounded 40 people, including children, doctors said. The emergency room of a nearby hospital was filled with bloodied bodies. Shiites are expected to finish on top in the elections to the 275-seat National Assembly after decades of oppression during Saddam’s Sunni-dominant rule.

— With input from agencies