BAGHDAD, 20 November 2005 — Car bombs killed at least 48 people in Iraq yesterday, a day after more than 80 died in suicide blasts across the country and as US President George W. Bush pledged never to relent in his war on terror.

In the deadliest of yesterday’s attacks, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near crowded condolence tents during the funeral of a Shiite tribal sheikh in a town north of Baghdad.

Police Col. Muthaffar Aboud said 35 people were killed and around 50 wounded in the attack in Abu Sayda, near Baquba, a violent city about 65 km northeast of Baghdad.

Earlier, another suicide car bomber targeted a crowded market in the Diyala Bridge area of southern Baghdad, killing 13 people and wounding around 20, the Interior Ministry said.

The attacks followed twin suicide bombings at Shiite mosques in northeastern Iraq on Friday, strikes that appeared intent on aggravating the country’s sectarian divisions, which have only worsened in the run-up to elections set for Dec. 15.

Yesterday, Ibrahim Ahmed, a local government official in Khanaqin, the town where the mosques were attacked, played down reports that several people linked to the bombings had been arrested, saying there were no strong leads in the case.

The Khanaqin blasts followed two suicide car bomb attacks on a Baghdad hotel popular with journalists and contractors. All told, Friday’s violence left 83 people dead and more than 100 wounded, one of the bloodiest days for Iraq in recent months.

Addressing US troops in Osan, South Korea during a tour of Asia, Bush was unremitting in defense of the war in Iraq, saying troops would stay until victory and rejecting critics’ calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of 135,000 US troops.

He quoted a top US commander in Iraq as saying that a deadline for pullout would be “a recipe for disaster,” and said that as long as he was president, “our strategy in Iraq will be driven by the sober judgment of our military commanders.”

“We will fight the terrorists in Iraq, we will stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory that our brave troops have fought for,” said a leather jacket-clad Bush.

Ahead of December’s election, Bush said there was cause for optimism. In the 2-1/2 years since Saddam Hussein was toppled, he said, Iraqis had elected a transitional government, ratified a constitution and were ready to vote on a permanent government.

“Iraq is making amazing progress from the days of being under the thumb of a brutal dictator,” he said.

That view contrasts sharply with the feelings of many Iraqis who are frustrated by the lack of progress since Saddam’s overthrow, including high unemployment, scant rebuilding, soaring corruption and a widespread lack of security.

Campaigning for the election has not begun in earnest, but already violence appears to be on the rise, mirroring the surge in bomb attacks and assassinations that took place in the buildup to elections held in January and October’s referendum.

In Khanaqin, a mixed Shiite and Kurdish town that has seen little violence in the past, families buried their dead yesterday. Men carried a stream of simple wooden coffins through a crowd of black-clad women wailing in mourning, before the procession moved to a nearby cemetery.

After one coffin was buried, a woman clawed angrily at the earth, as if trying to dig her husband or son back out.

US and Iraqi forces have been conducting operations against insurgents throughout western Iraq in recent weeks in an effort to stem the insurgency ahead of the election and increase the ability of Sunnis to make it to the polls.

At the last election in January, most Sunni Arabs either boycotted or were too scared by insurgent threats to vote, so the minority community, once influential under Saddam, ended up with next to no representation in Parliament.

The United States is keen to bolster Sunni participation this time around in the hope that greater engagement in politics will draw support away from the insurgency and ultimately allow US and other foreign troops to go home.

The three days of reconciliation talks in Cairo are seeking to achieve similar goals and within hours of the start had homed in on the disputes which have dragged Iraq close to civil war.