A suicide car bomber in a busy Baghdad commercial district killed at least 21 people Monday, setting vehicles on fire and damaging a nearby Sunni shrine, police and hospital officials said. The blast also wounded at least 66 people, including three traffic policemen.
The explosion went off at 2 p.m. just as U.S. and Iranian diplomats were wrapping up a historic meeting aimed at ending the violence in Iraq.
A battle raged Monday between militants and police in the narrow alleys of a central Baghdad neighborhood after insurgents hijacked two minibuses and kidnapped at least 15 passengers, police said.
At least three policemen were killed and eight other people were wounded in the fighting, authorities said.
The attackers took the passengers to an abandoned medical center. Nine militants were arrested as they attacked security forces from nearby alleys with light weapons. Iraqi security forces stormed the building, but the militants had left, apparently with their hostages, police said.
A rocket landed near a gas station in the Shiite-dominated Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada on Monday afternoon, killing four people and wounding three others, police said.
Hours earlier, two mortars slammed into a Karrada street, killing two people and wounding six others, police said.
A parked car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in southeastern Baghdad’s Zafaraniyah neighborhood Monday evening, killing three civilians and injuring 10 others, police said.
A roadside bomb killed two people and injured another nine when it detonated Monday under a parked car in the central Baghdad district of Bab al-Muadham, according to police.
A sniper targeting the entrance to Mustansiriyah University in eastern Baghdad killed a female student, authorities reported.
At least 31 unidentified bodies were found throughout Baghdad, mostly in the contested neighborhoods west of the river, evidence that sectarian violence continues.
Attacks on Iraqi security continued Monday, with two police officers in the northern city of Mosul killed in a suicide bombing and a police officer in Basra killed in a drive-by shooting, police said.
Early Monday, gunmen killed a police officer when they opened fire on a patrol north of Baqubah in Diyala province.
Before midday Monday, a squad of the 5th division of the Iraqi army raided Shaqraq village northeast of Baghdad, killing four suspected terrorists and finding a large cache of weapons and ammunition.
