Al-Qaeda's offshoot in Iraq on Monday claimed a suicide car bombing that killed 24 policemen south of Baghdad last week and vowed revenge attacks in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death.

The group's statements on a jihadist Internet forum came shortly after Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Al-Qaeda was "likely" to seek revenge for bin Laden's killing by striking Iraq.

"The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for the May 5th suicide bombing in the city of Hilla in Babil province of Iraq in a communique issued on jihadist forums on" Monday, US monitoring group SITE Intelligence said in a statement.

The Hilla attack, where a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car at a police station and killed 24 policemen and wounded 72 others, came just three days after Al-Qaeda founder bin Laden was killed in a covert US commando raid in Pakistan.

In its statement, Al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch indicated that the Hilla bomb attack was carried out in revenge for bin Laden's death.

"So sleep soundly O Lion of Islam and Sheikh of the Mujahideen (holy warrior), for we are not of those who shed tears and sit idly by crying like women -- this was not and will not be our way," it said according to an English-language translation by SITE.

In a statement on the Honein Islamist forum, Al-Qaeda's "emir" in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Qurashi, described US President Barack Obama as "the rat in the black house", and warned: "The world will be small for you, after the death of Osama bin Laden because you will live in fear and terror."

"I tell our brothers in Al-Qaeda, and especially Sheikh Mujahid Ayman al-Zawahiri and the leaders of Al-Qaeda that in the Islamic State of Iraq, there are loyal men who stick to the truth. They will not quit, and we swear to God, blood for blood and destruction for destruction."

On Saturday, Zebari said during a visit to Tunisia that Al-Qaeda was "still present in Iraq and pursues its operations in the country, so its revenge after the assassination of bin Laden is likely."

In its statement posted online, the Iraqi Qaeda group described last Thursday's attack on the Hilla police station, saying it was carried out during peak hours.

"After surveillance of the headquarters... our hero raided the fortified building with his explosives-laden vehicle in the peak hour of its activity, where more than 200 elements amongst criminal officers and filthy members had gathered," SITE quoted it as saying.

The Islamic State of Iraq also claimed responsibility for another car bomb explosion that took place the day after the Hilla attack and in the same area.

"It was detonated on the next day on the forces charged with surrounding the headquarters and removing the bodies of the dead" from the earlier bombing, said the statement.

No casualties were reported as a result of Friday's explosion that took place just 50 metres (165 feet) from the previous day's bombing.

But the Al-Qaeda offshoot said the explosion has "led to the destruction of three military vehicles and the death and injury of those who were onboard."

The Hilla blast was the deadliest to hit Iraq since March 29, when a band of Al-Qaeda gunmen and suicide bombers managed to storm a provincial council building in the central city of Tikrit killing 58 people.

Mainly Shiite, Hilla lies just beyond the edge of a confessionally mixed area south of the capital that earned the monicker Triangle of Death during the sectarian bloodshed that peaked in Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

The statement by the Islamic State of Iraq also included a report of 23 other attacks carried out in areas south of Baghdad between March 26 and April 16.

Violence is down dramatically in Iraq from its peak, but attacks remain common. A total of 211 Iraqis were killed in violence in April, according to official figures.

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