JAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful car bomb exploded outside the gates of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta today, killing seven people and wounding nearly 100 in an attack police blamed on al-Qaida-linked terrorists.

The blast flattened the embassy's gate, mangled cars on the busy commercial street and shattered the windows of nearby high-rise buildings. Dazed survivors desperately tried to locate colleagues and relatives.

A senior Indonesian police officer who asked not to be identified said seven people died in the 10:15 a.m. blast, including three policemen guarding the building. A doctor at a nearby hospital said 98 people were admitted with injuries, none of them foreigners.

About a dozen Australians were slightly wounded, mostly by flying glass, an embassy spokeswoman said.

Police immediately blamed Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror network that is linked to al-Qaida.

The group has been accused in several deadly bombings, including the bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in the same neighborhood last year, in which 12 people were killed.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. jets today pounded the rebel stronghold of Fallujah and a town near the Syrian border that had come under control of insurgents, killing dozens of people, officials and witnesses said. Warplanes hammered Tal Afar in efforts to return the city to Iraqi government control.At least 27 people were killed and 70 were injured, said Nineveh province health chief Dr. Rabie Yassin, who accused the military of stopping outsiders from bringing in help. The military said initial reports put the number of insurgents dead at 57.American warplanes fired missiles on a building used by associates of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the third day of strikes in Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgents bent on driving coalition forces from the country. At least nine were killed, including two children, said Dr. Ahmad Thair of the Fallujah General Hospital.Meanwhile, several explosions echoed across the Iraqi capital today, and smoke rose above the heavily fortified Green Zone, witnesses said. There was no immediate indication of what caused the blasts.The attacks in Fallujah a day before raised plumes of smoke but left no extensive damage or signs of weakening the Sunni militants who have steadily expanded their control of this city about 30 miles west of Baghdad.Elsewhere in this city of 300,000, fighters patrolled the streets in new American pickups. One resident, 33-year-old Abu Rihab, said they were part of a 16-vehicle fleet commandeered between Jordan and Baghdad.The Fallujah Brigade, which the Americans organized in May to maintain security after the Marines lifted a three-week siege, has all but disappeared, along with virtually all signs of Iraqi state authority.