A suicide truck bomb ripped through a line of vehicles waiting at a checkpoint on Friday in Fallujah and killed at least seven civilians, while authorities in the capital discovered the bodies of six more men who were blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the back of the head, police said.

A powerful bomb hit a United States tank in east Baghdad, setting it afire and blowing off the treads, police said. The American military confirmed a tank was attacked but gave no further information. It was not known if there were any casualties.

And a police officer in Tikrit died disarming a roadside bomb, when a second explosive device detonated, also wounding two others.

Abu Ghraib
Violence continued on the Muslim sabbath a day after the US military said it planned to start moving thousands of detainees out of Abu Ghraib prison to a new lock-up near the Baghdad airport within three months. The plan calls for the notorious facility to be handed back to Iraqi authorities as soon as possible.

Abu Ghraib had become perhaps the most infamous prison in the world, known as the site where US soldiers abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.

The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other US military prisons in the country is finished. The process will take several months, said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesperson in Baghdad.

Abu Ghraib currently houses 4 537 out of the 14 589 detainees held by the US military in the country. Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib, though it is not known how many.

The US government initially spoke of tearing down Abu Ghraib after it became a symbol of the scandal. Widely publicised photographs of prisoner abuse by American military guards and interrogators led to intense global criticism of the US war in Iraq and helped fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Abu Ghraib was kept in service after the Iraqi government objected. Planning for the new facility at Camp Cropper began in 2004, Johnson said.

However, the Iraqis are all but certain to use Abu Ghraib as a jail for some time at least, because they do not have the money to build new prisons.

Hangings
The Iraqi Cabinet announced on Thursday that it hanged 13 insurgents, the first executions of militants since the ouster of Saddam.

The announcement listed the name of only one of those hanged, Shukair Farid, a former police officer in the northern city of Mosul who allegedly confessed that he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist fellow Iraqis to kill police and civilians.

"The competent authorities have today carried out the death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet announcement said.

Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to spread the fear through killings and abductions", the government said.

A judicial official said the death sentences were handed down in separate trials and were carried out in Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing insurgent retribution.

In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers, the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's ouster in April 2003. The men, considered common criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.

Capital punishment was suspended during the formal US occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for those found guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs, saying it was necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.

The authorities also wanted to have the option of executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime. Under the former dictator, 114 offences were punishable by death.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for allegedly massacring more than 140 people in Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt against him there in 1982.

Death sentences must be approved by the three-member presidential council headed by President Jalal Talabani, who opposes executions. In the September hangings and again in the Thursday executions, Talabani refused to sign the authorisation himself but gave his two vice-presidents the authority.

Violence
A series of explosions on Thursday rattled Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 31.

Police reported finding five more blindfolded, handcuffed bodies killed execution-style, three of them near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and two others in the Sadr City Shi'ite slum in the east of the capital.

The US military reported the death of another marine, killed on Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar province. At least 2 305 US service members have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In political developments, Shi'ite politicians said they asked Talabani, a Kurd, to convene Parliament on March 19, one week past the constitutional deadline, marking an apparent compromise in the battle over a second term for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shi'ite.

Shi'ite legislators Khaled al-Attiyah and Khudayer al-Khuzai told The Associated Press that the request for Parliament to convene had been delivered to Talabani. On Sunday, the president sought to issue a decree that would have called the Parliament into session on March 12, as spelled out in the Constitution.

But the move was blocked when one of two vice-presidents -- a Shi'ite -- initially refused to co-sign the decree as required by law.

Vice-President Adil Abdul-Mahdi relented on Wednesday, but the issue still faced heated opposition from other Shi'ite political forces, especially in the powerful bloc loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. -- Sapa-AP