BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A suicide car bomber slammed into a line of police cars sealing off a Baghdad neighborhood Friday as American troops rounded up dozens of suspected militants, including many foreign fighters, capping a day of violence across Iraq that left at least 52 dead.

The car bombing, which killed three people and wounded 23, was the second this week targeting the capital’s beleaguered police forces. The mounting violence has increased pressure on Iraqis working to restore stability in their country but seen as collaborators because of their cooperation with U.S. forces.

The attack came hours after U.S. jets pounded suspected hideouts of an al-Qaida-linked group in and around the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in Anbar province west of Baghadad, killing at least 44 people.

Also Friday, the military said insurgents killed a U.S. Marine on patrol in Anbar province. It gave no details. As of Thursday, 1,027 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq campaign, according to the Defense Department.

A half-dozen cars were blocking a bridge in central Baghdad when a car rammed into them, police officials said. Police asked the driver to stop, but he advanced and exploded his vehicle in the middle of the parked cars.

“I was thrown outside my car,” said a policeman, Ali Jabar, who was being treated at a hospital for wounds to his face and one hand. He blamed insurgents waging a 17-month campaign to oust U.S.-led coalition forces.

“By attacking Iraqi police, they think that they will be sent to heaven, but by God’s will, they are now melting in hell,” Jabar said.

A wave of bombings, mortar attacks and shootings targeting police and potential recruits has killed hundreds of people nationwide since the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, as militants try to thwart efforts to build a strong Iraqi police force capable of taking over security from American troops.

The car exploded in the heart of one of Baghdad’s busiest commercial areas, a short distance away from the storied al-Moutanabi street, whose outdoor book market attracts large numbers on Fridays. When police fired shots to disperse the crowds, thousands of shoppers streamed from the area.

“I saw human flesh and blood in the street, then I fled,” said Mouayad Shehab.

The blast left a 6-foot-wide crater and littered the area with debris, including at least five artillery shells that police said came from the suicide car. Parts of the car, believed to be an old Chevrolet Malibu, were found more than a 100 yards away, witnesses said.

The police vehicles had been deployed to help American troops seal off the area around Haifa Street, where U.S. and Iraqi forces were raiding suspected insurgent hideouts, sparking a gunbattle.

Security forces arrested 63 suspects, including Syrians, Sudanese and Egyptians, and seized rockets, grenades and machine guns, Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim said. At least 10 people were wounded in the raids, according to the Health Ministry.

Earlier Friday, U.S. forces intercepted another car carrying explosives as it attempted to break through a checkpoint in the Haifa Street area, the military said. When the vehicle refused to stop, troops opened fire, setting off the explosives. The two people inside the vehicle were killed and an Iraqi National Guard soldier was wounded.

West of Baghdad, hundreds of men dug mass graves to bury the dead from a wave of American airstrikes that started late Thursday and stretched into Friday in and around Fallujah. Health Ministry official Saad al-Amili said at least 44 people were killed and 27 wounded in the Fallujah strikes.

The U.S. military said intelligence reports estimated up to 60 militants may have been killed. American troops have not entered Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city in April, and the claim could not be verified.

Mahmoud Sheil, 50, a tribal sheik in the area, likened the killings from U.S. airstrikes in Fallujah to the slaughter of civilians under Saddam Hussein’s ousted dictatorship.

“They (the Americans) say that Saddam is the man of mass graves, but they are the ones responsible for these mass graves,” he said.

Blood seeped through the blankets and sheets wrapping the corpses, which were lowered into the graves in groups of four.

The U.S. military said a first series of strikes targeted a compound in a village south of Fallujah where up to 90 militants loyal to Jordanian-born terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were believed to be hold up.

U.S. warplanes later hit a two-story house inside Fallujah that was also allegedly being used by fighters belonging to Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group.

Militants who survived the strikes in the compound sought refuge in nearby villages, but U.S. forces said they broke off an offensive to hunt them down to avoid civilian casualties.

Blood covered the floors of Fallujah General Hospital as doctors struggled to cope with a flood of casualties, many brought to the hospital in private cars. Relatives pounded their chests in grief and denounced the United States.

Religious leaders switched on loudspeakers at the Fallujah mosque, calling on residents to donate blood and chanting: “God is great.”

As night fell, a U.S. jet carried out another strike on the city, firing a missile at a house in the central Dhubat neighborhood that the military said was an al-Zarqawi hideout. At least three bodies were visible at the scene.

Insurgents have only strengthened their grip on Fallujah since the April siege ended, regularly mounting attacks against Marine positions and military convoys on the city’s outskirts.

Also Friday, British troops clashed with fighters loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, witnesses said. A military spokesman said one British soldier was wounded.

In the north, the governor of Salahuddin province said his convoy came under attack Friday near Tikrit, Saddam’s home town. “I escaped today from an assassination attempt,” said Gov. Hamad Hamoud Shagtti.

Iraq has seen a surge of violence in the past week that has killed more than 250 people nationwide, as insurgents persist with kidnappings and bombings aimed at driving out the United States and its allies and embarrassing the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

In the latest abductions, gunmen grabbed two Americans and a Briton in a dawn raid Thursday on their home on a leafy Baghdad street – a bold abduction that underlined the increasing danger for foreigners in the embattled capital.

The U.S. Embassy identified the Americans as Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong; the family of the Briton identified him as Kenneth Bigley. All three worked for Gulf Services Co., a United Arab Emirates-based construction company.

More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped, some in a bid to collect ransoms. Many have been executed. At least five other Westerners are currently being held hostage in Iraq, including an Iraqi-American man, two female Italian aid workers and two French reporters.

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Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.

AP-ES-09-17-04 1634EDT