Iraqis witnessed bloody events on the anniversary of the 1968 coup, which made the Baath party led by Saddam Hussein take over power and rule Iraq for more than 35 years.

A wave of car bombings and assassination attempts occurred Saturday in Iraq after about two weeks of relative calmness.

July 17 was the national day of Iraq at the time of Saddam. But it has been cancelled by the Iraqi Interim Governing Council (IGC) and replaced by April 9, the day of toppling the former regime.

Members of the Iraqi police, who were at the site of the fist explosion that took place Saturday morning in Baghdad, said that these explosions were expected by the supporters of Saddam to avenge his American enemies and whoever cooperates with them.

Malik Dohan Al Hassan, the Iraqi Minister of Justice who handled the dossier of trying Saddam, was a target for assassination.

Insurgents wanted to get rid of him in a car bombing as his convoy drove past west part of Baghdad early Saturday morning.

The explosion caused the death of at least five of his bodyguards and the injury of another. Some civilians were also injured and a number of civilian cars were damaged and burnt. But the minister was not hurt.

"An explosion took place by the convoy, a car approached and then detonated," said a traffic policeman who hurried to the site.

As the police were gathering the scattered human bodies, another explosion took place, and it seemed that it targeted the police.

A statement by a group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamic extremist connected with Al Qaida, has claimed responsibility for the attack that targeted the Iraqi minister.

The statement, the authenticity of which was not verified, appeared on an Islamist web site and was signed by the military wing of Zarqawi's Unifications and Jihad Group.

"Our brothers in the group of Unifications and Jihad have carried out a military operation against the atheist and traitor Malik Dohan Al Hassan, the minister of justice in an atheist government.

"If you have escaped this time from our arrow, we still have other arrows that neither you nor your men would escape," the statement said.

In Mahmoodiyah, 40 km south of Baghdad, another car bombing took place near the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guards.

Two were reported dead and 50 others injured. Most of the casualties were from the National Guards or the volunteers in the National Guards, and the injured were transported to the hospital of Al Mahmoodiyah for treatment.