Taji (Iraq), June 6 (Reuters): Guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside an Iraqi-US base just north of Baghdad today, killing nine people and wounding dozens as attacks intensified ahead of the formal end of the US-led occupation on June 30.

Pressing for a new UN resolution on Iraq’s future, Washington said it was confident of a breakthrough at a special Security Council session later today.

With the handover less than four weeks away, Baghdad has seen a surge in deadly attacks in recent days. Hospital sources said at least nine Iraqis were killed and 61 wounded in the blast at Taji.

A statement purported to be from a group headed by Islamist militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who Washington suspects of links to al Qaida, claimed responsibility for the car bombing, describing it as a suicide attack.

“One of the heroes of this country, may he rest in peace, struck a military base belonging to US forces in Taji, north of Baghdad, and took many lives,” said a statement claiming to be from Jama’at al-Tawhid and Jihad.

Zarqawi and his group have claimed a series of suicide bombs and attacks in Iraq on US troops and Iraqi officials. US Major Andreas Dekunpfy said in Taji that a car bomb was used, but it was not clear if it was a suicide attack.

Poland’s foreign ministry said four civilian security guards — two of them Polish and two believed to be American — were killed in an ambush on their convoy in Baghdad yesterday. Zarqawi’s group also claimed responsibility for that attack.

In another incident yesterday, two soldiers were killed and two wounded when a bomb blew up near their convoy in northeastern Baghdad.

South of Baghdad, gunmen burst into a police station in the town of Mussayab yesterday and forced police into a cell before setting off explosives in the building, police said.

They said at least 10 policemen and two civilians were killed.

Washington has been trying to quell guerrilla resistance ahead of the formal handover of sovereignty, but says its 138,000 troops in Iraq will remain well beyond that date to help struggling Iraqi security forces combat the insurgency.

Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, repeated today his desire to see them stay on: “We would like the multinational forces to remain in Iraq for some time until Iraq is capable of handling its own security problems,” he told the BBC.

International divisions over how long foreign troops should stay and how much control the new government should have over them have hampered efforts to agree a new U.. resolution.

The Security Council will on Sunday discuss a letter from Allawi on how Iraq can have an input into major U.S. military operations. Washington, after three revisions of a resolution on Iraq's future, may also present what it hopes will be a final draft. The session begins at 2100 GMT.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he expected a breakthrough, and U.S. President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, long at odds over Iraq, said after talks in Paris on Saturday they hoped for agreement soon.

Russia, which also wields a veto on the council, said the third draft Ä giving Iraq's new leaders the right to send home U.S.-led troops Ä was better but needed more work.

In the holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, a truce between U.S. forces and Shi'ite militiamen appeared to be holding on Sunday.

Iraqi police were back on the streets after having been driven out two months ago, when radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched an uprising against occupying troops.

Under a deal struck last week, Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and the U.S. military agreed to withdraw from the city, with Iraqi police taking over responsibility for security.