The battle for Baghdad claimed five more US lives as Iraqis began on Monday to mark the end of Ramazan marred by spiralling unrest and the murder of 17 police trainees.
Two civilians and a policeman were killed and 13 wounded in a bomb attack in the centre of the capital as a police patrol passed near a Sunni mosque, the interior ministry said.
Overnight, the bang and flash of colourful fireworks mingled with the more familiar crack of automatic weapons and the bright glow of decoy flares from American helicopters flying low over the city skyline.
But while Sunnis began to celebrate the three-day festival of Eid ul Fitr -- Iraq's Shia majority will follow suit on Tuesday -- doctors battled to save the survivors of a brutal ambush Sunday on a convoy of unarmed police recruits.
The death toll from the attack rose to 17 overnight, medics said, with more than 20 wounded after insurgents raked their buses with automatic fire.
"The incident took place while the victims were returning to Baghdad ... They were killed near Khan Bani Saad," said interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf.
The interior ministry said victims' bodies were rigged with booby-traps after the attack, while dozens of their colleagues were kidnapped.
Twenty-five recruits were released overnight in a joint rescue operation by US and Iraqi troops on the assailants' hideout. Those freed were all from the capital's Shia district of Sadr City, a military official said.
Forty arrests were made, including the suspected kidnappers, he said.
American casualties were also mounting. The US military confirmed five more soldiers had been killed on Sunday in and around Baghdad in separate gun and bomb attacks, bringing the number killed this month to 85.
In addition, an American police officer on contract to the military to train Iraqi officers was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb.
With one week to go, October remains on course to become the bloodiest month for the US military in Iraq since November 2004, when marines were engaged in a fierce battle in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
Since then, the battlefield has become still more complex for US forces, with the Sunni insurgency joined by its enemies in a fragmented group of rival Shia political militias in posing a threat to the US-led coalition.
About 15,000 American troops have been brought into the capital, including battle-hardened infantry from Alaska's Stryker Brigade, who are now in the 15th month of a planned 12-month tour, but nothing seems to slow the violence.
Already, before Ramazan, United Nations and Iraqi officials were reporting more than 100 deaths per day. When the holy month began, US officials reported a "tremendous spike" in violence with attacks up by more than a fifth.
The constant litany of bad news from Iraq, more than three-and-a-half years after US forces invaded and toppled Saddam Hussein, has led to mounting pressure on US President George W. Bush to change his tactics.
With key congressional elections in two weeks, Bush's Democratic opponents and even some of his Republican allies have demanded a clearer strategy to either win the war or bring the 142,000 US troops home.
Bush met his top Middle East generals and diplomats on Saturday, but has announced no new plan, despite press reports that he will increase pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government to disarm the militias.
"The truth of the matter is there's a need for radical change in policy," said Senator Joseph Biden, an influential Democrat on the foreign affairs committee said in an interview with Fox News.
Republican Senator Arlen Specter said he was encouraged by reports that Bush would push Maliki to take a bolder stance, but added: "I don't believe that a shift in tactics ought to wait until after the election.
"There are too many casualties there," he told CNN. "If we have a better course, we ought to adopt it sooner rather than later."
Iraq's deputy prime minister Barham Saleh, who was in London to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair, warned against allowing "panic" to grip British and US decision-making and urged the coalition to keep faith with his government.
"I'm obviously concerned about the debate both in the United States and in Europe, I have to say, because there is too much of the pessimistic tone to this debate, even I would say in certain circles a defeatist tone," he said.
The main Shia militias, radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Badr Organisation of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), have close ties to Maliki's ruling coalition.
The Iraqi prime minister is pursuing a strategy of binding the movements into the political process, rather than openly confronting them with his beleaguered security forces, despite a recent series of bloody clashes.