BAGHDAD - Al Qaeda in Iraq said its new leader named on Monday would keep up a campaign of beheadings and suicide bombings begun by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. bombs last week.
The warning came on a day when violence, including two car bombs, killed at least 34 people.
In the worst attack, a bomb killed at least 10 people at a market in the upscale Mansour district of western Baghdad.
"The shura council of "The shura council of al Qaeda in Iraq unanimously agreed on Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir to be a successor to Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," said a statement signed by al Qaeda and posted on a Web site frequently used by Islamist militants," said a statement signed by al Qaeda and posted on a Web site frequently used by Islamist militants.
"Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir is a good brother, has a history in jihad and is knowledgeable. We ask God that he... continue what Sheikh Abu Musab began," it said.
Muhajir was not among the names al Qaeda experts had expected to succeed Zarqawi, a Sunni militant who U.S. and Iraqi officials said was seeking to spark a sectarian civil war.
Al Qaeda makes up just 5 percent of the Sunni Arab insurgency but its suicide bombers have mounted the most spectacular violence, sometimes killing over 100 people in a single attack.
Although U.S. and Iraqi leaders have hailed Zarqawi's death in an American air strike as a major blow against al Qaeda, no one has suggested the 500-pound bombs that ended his life would halt the violence ravaging Iraq.
Earlier, a source in the prime minister's office said Iraq was considering inviting members of insurgent groups to national reconciliation talks.
A committee of government officials and political groups will try to agree on a definition of "resistance", he said.
If they agree, members of some insurgent groups will be invited to take part in the talks on July 22.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has rejected the idea of dialogue with Saddam Hussein loyalists and other hardline groups, saying they have Iraqi blood on their hands.
But Sunni officials say he can deliver on promises of national reconciliation only if he opens dialogue with groups leading the insurgency.
"They (the government) must talk to everybody and when we say everybody, we mean everybody," said Abdul Hadi al-Zubeidi, a Sunni politician.
Qaeda Raid
Al Qaeda, far more extreme than any other militant or insurgent group, is comprised of Iraqis and Arab militants who travel to Iraq to wage what they see as a holy war against U.S. occupation troops and anyone linked to them.
Al Qaeda expert Fares bin Houzam said Muhajir could be a pseudonym for Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who U.S. officials have said could succeed Zarqawi, or Saudi-born Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Qarni, whom al Qaeda named as Zarqawi's deputy last year in an Internet statement later retracted.
The U.S. military said U.S.-led forces killed seven militants with links to senior al Qaeda leaders in a raid on Monday near the area where Zarqawi was killed.
"Following the assault, coalition troops discovered two children had been killed. One child was wounded and evacuated for treatment," it said in a statement.
A senior U.S. military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, said the gunmen had the children with them on a roof and described the deaths, which included a six-month-old boy and another child, as "extremely unfortunate".
Zarqawi lived for almost an hour after the first U.S. bomb hit his hideout north of Baghdad last Wednesday, Caldwell said.
"This (his death) was approximately 24 minutes after the coalition forces arrived and approximately 52 minutes after the first strike on the safe house," he told a news conference.
A car bomb ripped through a market in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City district on Monday might, killing five people and wounding 19, police said.
Earlier, two car bombs exploded near a market in the town of Balad north of Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 26, police and hospital sources said.
And a roadside bomb targeting a bus carrying industry ministry workers killed six people and wounded 12 others in Baghdad, police sources said.
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