Baghdad, Iraq – Two car bombs killed at least 15 people and injured 28 when they exploded just after dawn today in central Baghdad, police said.
The twin explosions took place nearly simultaneously in a predominantly Shiite area that’s a popular shopping district, police Lt. Col. Salman Abdul Karim and officer Ahmed Hatam Al-Sharie said.
At dusk the day before, four car bombs exploded, killing at least 23 people, including sidewalk diners and passengers at a bus station. The coordinated attacks served as a chilling reminder of how potent militants remain in the capital despite around- the-clock U.S. and Iraqi troop patrols.
In all, at least 33 people were killed Wednesday across Iraq, including a prominent Sunni law professor and his son assassinated by gunmen. Jassim al-Issawi was a former judge who put his name forward at one point to join the committee drafting Iraq’s constitution. The assassination appeared aimed at intimidating Sunni Arabs willing to join Iraq’s efforts to create a stable political system.
The U.S. military said three U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday during combat operations west of Baghdad near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi. At least 1,727 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Wednesday’s first three car bombs – clearly coordinated – went off almost simultaneously only blocks apart in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula, where al-Issawi was killed hours earlier.
Two bombs exploded in front of a pair of restaurants, killing at least 11 and wounding 28.
The third car bomb exploded when a suicide bomber rammed a nearby bus station, killing at least eight and wounding 20, police said.
About 15 minutes later, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army patrol in a nearby suburb, killing at least four bystanders, police said. The dead included a woman and a child. No Iraqi soldiers were among the wounded.
A fifth car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy missed, killing instead three Iraqis and wounding seven in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.
Four Iraqis also were killed Wednesday by two roadside bombs, and a group of children drove their bicycles over a bomb planted beneath the ground in Baqubah, northeast of the capital. A 9-year-old boy was killed, and two others, ages 6 and 7, were wounded.
