The shells had been intended for a nearby US base, but missed their target, said police colonel Ibrahim Jaburi, adding that it was the second time the hostel had been hit by mistake.

"The number of killed has risen to 17 and the number of wounded remains at eight," said Hamad Hamud, the governor of Salahuddin province, where Tikrit is located.

"The attackers were targeting a US base, which is close to the residence on the eastern side of the city," Jaburi told reporters.

Employees at a factory for sand and other construction materials live in the dormitory where the Russian-made mortars struck. Most had come from Iraq's southern provinces such as Basra and Nasiriyah, police said.

Funerals were due to take place in the town yesterday.

Six Iraqis were killed and 15 others wounded in another day of violence in the restive Iraqi city of Ramadi yesterday, hospital officials said.

The cause of the deaths was not immediately clear, but rebel fighters and US troops clashed in the city over the weekend which saw at least 10 Iraqis killed and 15 people wounded, including three marines.

A deputy governor of Baghdad, Hassam Kamel Abdel Fattah, was shot dead by unknown assailants in the southern district of Dora on Monday, a spokesman at Iraq's interior ministry said.

"He was travelling to work by car at about 7:47 (0445 GMT) when unknown assailants gunned him down," said Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman.

Two of the deputy governor's bodyguards were also injured in the attack, he said.

A US marine was killed and four others wounded during a day of clashes around the flashpoint city of Ramadi on Sunday, the military said yesterday.

"A marine was killed in action and four others wounded in the area around Ramadi," a US military official told AFP.

The precise cause of the death was not given, but three US marines were injured in a roadside bomb blast as their convoy passed through the Sunni Muslim bastion early on Sunday.

The day witnessed a barrage of mortars, rockets and gunfire as insurgents and US troops skirmished.

In one of the heaviest single-day casualty tolls in the violent province of al-Anbar, eight US marines were killed and 10 others injured when a car bomb exploded on Saturday near Ramadi's sister town of Fallujah.

The latest death brought to 1,113 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to a Pentagon tally.

In Basra a British soldier has been found dead at a military base in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a military spokesman said Sunday, adding that the cause of death was not immediately known.

"We regret to announce that the body of a British soldier was discovered at a British military base in Basra," Lieutenant Commander Richard Walters said.

"Investigations are ongoing but it is not believed to be the result of a hostile act," he said.

Walters declined to speculate about the cause of death, adding that hopefully the investigation would determine this.