Three suicide drivers using trucks containing chlorine struck targets in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, forcing about 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops to seek medical treatment for exposure to the gas, the U.S. military said Saturday.

According to a BBC report, eight people were killed in the bombings.

The attacks came after back-to-back bombings last month released chlorine gas, prompting the U.S. military to warn that insurgents are adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic.

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The attacks started just after 4 p.m. Friday when a driver detonated the explosives in a pickup truck northeast of Ramadi, wounding one U.S. service member and one Iraqi civilian, the military said in a statement.

That was followed by a similar explosion involving a dump truck south of Fallujah in Amiriyah that killed two policemen and left as many as 100 local citizens showing signs of chlorine exposure, with symptoms ranging from minor skin and lung irritations to vomiting, the military said.

Another suicide bomber detonated a dump truck containing a 200 gallon chlorine tank rigged with explosives at 7:13 p.m., also south of Fallujah in the Albu Issa tribal region, the military said. U.S. forces responded to the attack and found about 250 local civilians, including seven children, suffering from symptoms related to chlorine exposure, according to the statement.

Insurgents have detonated three other trucks carrying chlorine canisters since late January.

The most recent attack occurred Feb. 21 in Baghdad, killing five people and sending more than 55 to hospitals, a day after a bomb planted on a chlorine tanker left more than 150 villagers stricken north of the capital.

A suicide bomber driving a dump truck filled with explosives and a chlorine tank also struck a quick reaction force and Iraqi police in the Sunni city of Ramadi on Jan. 28, killing 16 people.

The military also said last month that they found a car bomb factory near Fallujah with about 65 propane tanks and ordinary chemicals it believed the insurgents were going to try to mix with explosives. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman, called it a crude attempt to raise the terror level.

Iraqi police said a suicide bomber driving a tanker truck detonated his explosives about Friday in a line of cars waiting on the edge of the village of Amiriyah to enter Fallujah, killing at least six people, including two policemen, and wounding 75, including women and children.

Police said they did not know what the tanker truck was carrying but some of the wounded apparently had inhaled noxious fumes.

A doctor, Mohammed Fuad, said 15 seriously wounded people were brought to the Fallujah hospital and most were having difficulty breathing and their faces had a blue tinge to them in addition to their other wounds. He said they had been exposed to a poisonous gas, but he could not confirm what it was.

A car bomb also exploded Friday about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Fallujah, killing one person and wounding four others, police said, adding that the bomb was targeting the reception center of a tribal sheik who has denounced Al-Qaida.

Both strikes carried the hallmarks of an increasingly bloody struggle for control of Anbar province - a hotbed of anti-U.S. guerrillas since the uprising in Fallujah in 2004 that galvanized the insurgency - despite stepped up efforts by American and Iraqi troops to tame the violence.

U.S. military envoys and pro-government leaders have worked hard to sway clan chiefs and other influential Anbar figures to turn against the militants, who include foreign jihadists fighting under the banner of Al-Qaida in Iraq. The extremists have fought back with targeted killings and bombings against fellow Sunnis.

Bombings and shootings targeted police patrols elsewhere in Iraq, killing five policemen, including two who died after a suicide car bomber struck the checkpoint they were manning near a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad. That attack left five other people wounded.

Meanwhile, an aide said Sadr City Mayor Rahim al-Darraji was still in the hospital after being wounded in an assassination attempt on Thursday but his condition was improving.

"He is getting better. God willing, he will leave the hospital as soon as possible," said the aide, who referred to himself as Abu Zahraa and declined to give more details.

Al-Darraji has been involved in negotiations with U.S. and Iraqi government officials seeking to persuade the Shiite militias to tamp down the violence against Sunnis, but the efforts have created tension in the ranks of Shiite militiamen and some blamed the assault - which also killed two bodyguards - on a faction unhappy about cooperation with the U.S. military, a local Mahdi Army commander said Friday.

Further signaling resurgent anger and opposition to the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the militia stronghold of Sadr City, radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decried U.S. forces as occupiers Friday and called on his followers to shout 'No, No America!'

Thousands of Shi'ites flooded from the mosque where al-Sadr's statement was read by a preacher at Friday prayers, spilling into the streets of the Sadr City slum to protest the two-week-old American military presence there. The U.S. military says al-Sadr has gone to Iran.

Officials with al-Sadr's Mahdi Army did not explain why al-Sadr chose to issue the surprisingly confrontational statement.

American military leaders had credited al-Sadr - who was said to have ordered his Mahdi Army militia to put away its weapons and not confront U.S. and Iraqi troops - for the relatively effortless start of security patrols and raids in the volatile Shiite slum, a no-go zone for U.S. forces until about two weeks ago.

Al-Sadr's message on the Muslim day of prayer and rest could signal a shift in his willingness to absorb the perceived indignity of the U.S. troop presence and wait out the security plan.

Or it could have been nothing more than a reminder to his followers that he was watching carefully and was still their leader.

The American military reacted cautiously to the al-Sadr statement.

"We have often seen differing political views or differing statements coming out of many of the political organizations here in Iraq, not just the Sadr bloc or al-Sadr's organization," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said. "As we've said, we are, if anything, cautiously optimistic, but it's still very early."

As part of their efforts, U.S. troops opened an impromptu medical clinic in a school in Sadr City - part of a growing number of civil projects American commanders hope will win goodwill from ordinary Iraqis.

Adults and children stood in lines behind concertina wire waiting to be treated for cuts and infections. A young boy on crutches hobbled toward U.S. soldiers.

One man who had come to be treated for an infected gash to his forehead said the number of chronic illnesses had grown considerably since the war began and good medial treatment became harder to find.

"If we go to an Iraqi hospital, we don't get the medicines we need," he said. "So we come here so maybe we can get some help."