Al-Qaeda may be shifting tactics back to the big, headline grabbing attacks in Iraq that helped plunge the country into chaos, a senior US commander said Monday.

"We have some indicators that they may be planning on executing kind of a large media type event," said Major General John Kelly, commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force in western Iraq.

His comments came amid news of a suicide attack by a man wearing an explosive belt that killed five US soldiers and wounded three others Monday in the center of Baghdad.

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Just days earlier, 68 people were killed in suicide attacks in the Baghdad's central commercial district of Karada.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell suggested Al-Qaeda was responding to pressure from a US-led military campaign that has squeezed it into the northern part of the country.

"We are starting to see some elements of Al-Qaeda lash out in other areas, perhaps in an attempt to distract us from the fight that is underway in the north," he told reporters.

Morrell said the US military was prepared to handle both.

Suicide attacks and huge car bombings with large numbers of civilian casualties have long been a signature of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has used the tactic to destabilize the country and inflame sectarian divisions.

The bombing of a golden domed Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 tipped the country into open sectarian conflict.

Kelly said it was unclear from the intelligence where Al-Qaeda might try to stage the attacks.

But he said he was focused on the threat in Al-Anbar province, a former Al-Qaeda stronghold until they were evicted last year by an alliance of tribal sheikhs and US forces.

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