Iraq gripped by violence

BAGHDAD, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Iraqi security forces and their U.S. advisers arrested more than 20 terrorist suspects as the death toll mounts from a weekend assault in Abu Ghraib.

The U.S. Defense Department reports Iraqi police in the northern city of Mosul nabbed an alleged member of the Islamic State of Iraq linked to a string of deadly attacks in the region. Another man tested positive for explosive residue.

In Kirkuk, the ethnically diverse city at the center of Kurdish-Arab disputes, emergency service personnel arrested a man they believed was behind a bombing network in the north.

During the weekend, militants dressed in Iraqi uniforms shot and beheaded as many as 13 men in the city of Abu Ghraib, the McClatchy news service reports.

Area residents said the assailants were allegedly targeting members of the Sunni Awakening Councils, who rose to power during the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq known as the surge.

The Voices of Iraq news agency, meanwhile, described a series of deadly attacks throughout the country on Monday.

A car bomb ripped through a central market in Kirkuk, leaving as many as six dead and another eight injured.

Meanwhile in Fallujah, the capital of the Sunni province of Anbar, three coordinated bombings killed as many as 12 people.

The arrests and attacks come as Iraqi officials warned of a rise in violence as the country prepares for parliamentary elections scheduled tentatively for January.