BAGHDAD, Feb 24: A fuel tanker rigged with explosives killed 37 people when it blew up near a mosque in western Iraq on Saturday, a day after the mosque's Sunni imam had criticised Al Qaeda militants, police and residents said.

The bomb exploded in a market in the town of Habaniya in the restive province of Anbar, where US forces are battling insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda.

Police said 64 people were wounded. An Interior Ministry source put the death toll at 31, with 67 wounded.

Local residents said the imam of the mosque had criticised Al Qaeda leadership during Friday prayers. Some Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar are leading a campaign to fight Al Qaeda. Habaniya lies 85 km west of the Baghdad.

On Monday, two suicide bombers in nearby Ramadi killed 11 people when they targeted the house of Sattar al-Buzayi, who has led a drive against Al Qaeda in the area.

Insurgents earlier stormed an Iraqi police checkpoint near Baghdad airport, killing eight policemen in a bold challenge to a US-backed security crackdown in the capital aimed at halting sectarian violence.

US President George W. Bush is sending 21,500 extra troops to Iraq to help with the Baghdad crackdown. Most are heading for the capital, but 4,000 will also be sent to Anbar to try to quell the insurgency raging there.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki expressed optimism about the 10-day-old security plan, saying US and Iraqi forces had killed around 400 suspected militants since it started.

But the attack on the police checkpoint in an area not far from the main US military headquarters in Baghdad underlined the hurdles faced by Iraqi security forces who are often out-gunned by increasingly sophisticated insurgents.

“It was a brazen attack,” said Captain Curtis Kellogg, a US military spokesman. “It was definitely coordinated. We expect this type of thing to continue. They will try to test the Iraqi and US security forces.”

A statement from the US military said eight to 10 gunmen attacked the checkpoint in two vehicles. Militants in the first one got out firing assault rifles and throwing hand grenades at the policemen.

The second vehicle was forced into a ditch where it was cordoned off on suspicion it could be a suicide car bomb.

Two militants were killed in the firefight. One was wearing a suicide vest, Kellogg said.

Maliki paid a visit on Saturday to the command centre for the Baghdad operation and urged security forces not to be swayed by sectarian loyalties.

He told reporters 426 suspected militants had been detained in the crackdown “and around that number have been killed” since it was launched in mid-February. The campaign is regarded as the last chance to prevent all-out civil war.—Reuters