Four big bombs went off across Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 157 people and wounding nearly 150, police said. A suicide bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to the Sadr City neighborhood, killing 30 people and injuring 37, police said.
In another incident, a parked car went off near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and injuring 13, police said. The explosion damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.
The third blast was from a bomb left on a minibus in the northwestern Risafi area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said. Shortly later, a parked car bomb detonated at the Sadriyah market in a mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad, killing 112 civilians and injuring 115, police and hospital officials said.
Elsewhere, American forces killed five suspects and detained 30 others Wednesday in a raid northeast of Fallujah, the military said. U.S. troops raided a group of buildings suspected of being used by militants, and located explosives inside one of them, the military said in a statement, cited by the AP. A helicopter was called in, and dropped precision-guided bombs on the cluster of buildings, it said.
Meanwhile, American troops came under fire and reacted in "self-defense," the statement said, killing five Iraqis and injuring four others.
Earlier, police in Ramadi discovered 17 decomposing corpses buried beneath two schoolyards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaida fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday.
The adult bodies were uncovered in the Anbar provincial capital after students and teachers returned to the schools a week ago and noticed an increasingly putrid odor and stray dogs digging in the area, Police Maj. Laith al-Dulaimi said.
