A car bombed ripped through a commercial district in western Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 20 people and injuring at least 80 others.
According to the AP, the explosion occurred about noon in the mixed Baiyaa neighborhood. The bombing Sunday came amid an 11-week crackdown by U.S.-led forces intended to bring stability to Baghdad.
Earlier another car bomb exploded outside a police station in the town of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing two police and a bystander and wounding three other police officers.
A few minutes later, gunmen in the town attacked a police checkpoint near the al-Askari shrine, killing another police officer, police said.
Also Sunday, a battle between unidentified gunmen and Iraqi forces in a market in the town of Baqouba 35 miles northeast of Baghdad left two civilians dead and injured a third civilian and a police officer, police said.
In the town of Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb outside a teacher's house killed three of his children, all of them under the age of 10, police said. The parents were not hurt in the attack.
Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen shot and killed two brothers in a western Baghdad neighborhood in a drive-by shooting, police said.
In the town of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car shot and killed a man who had been a colonel in the former Iraqi army as he was standing near his house, police said.
A bomb exploded in a market in the village of al Asriyah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, wounding 13 civilians, four of them seriously, police said.
Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of three men, who were blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in the Tigris River in the town of Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad.
