Four US soldiers were killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb near the Syrian border, and four American soldiers were injured when their Humvee crashed during a night-time operation west of Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.

Elsewhere, Iraq's neighbours met in Turkey yesterday to praise the formation of Iraq's new government.

At a meeting of Iraq's neighbors in Turkey, meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the violence was "not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours as well."

Fears that the ethnic tensions and violence in Iraq will spread beyond its borders brought foreign ministers from neighbouring countries to Turkey for talks yesterday

Turkey's prime minister opened the conference in a former Ottoman palace saying Iraq's stability is "not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours as well." Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia were represented as was Egypt.

Some of the worst attacks occurred in the capital, still reeling from Friday's onslaught in which at least 17 bombs exploded in Iraq, killing 50 people, including three US soldiers.

A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that had been negotiating for a stake in Iraq's new Shia-dominated government. The blast killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 18, police said.

Another suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded Saturday near the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women and a girl, and seriously wounding four soldiers, police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abboud Effait said.