Iraq: Scores killed in blasts, including seven US troops

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At least 54 Iraqis died Tuesday in bombings, including a coordinated strike that killed 25 in western Baghdad. Separately, the U.S. military confirmed the deaths of seven American troops.

The three coordinated car bombs in western Baghdad injured at least 55 people, a doctor at Yarmouk hospital said.  The blasts occurred in the Bayaa district, a predominantly Shi'ite neighbourhood. The Interior Ministry and police said 10 people were killed and 35 were injured.

In other attacks, a car bomb exploded near a Sunni mosque in northern Baghdad at the beginning of the evening rush hour, killing 17 people and wounding 35, a doctor at Al-Nuaman hospital said.

A bomb also exploded in a central Baghdad market, killing four people and wounding 15, police said. Two roadside bombs targeted an Iraqi police patrol in an eastern neighborhood of the capital, killing four policemen and injuring 12 people.

In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of the Iraqi capital, a roadside bomb killed three civilians.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said seven more American soldiers had died, pushing the U.S. military death toll for the month to 90.

Earlier, gunmen abducted a senior Trade Ministry official in Baghdad on Tuesday after stopping his vehicle on his way to work, a ministry source said, according to Reuters.

Muhanad Ahmed Saleh, director of the Baghdad International Fair, was nabbed by gunmen in two vehicles shortly after he left his home in Amiriya, a Sunni district in western Baghdad.

Also in Baghdad, police found 40 bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence.