A parked car bomb went off in a commercial district of central Baghdad Thursday, killing 11 people and injuring 57, police said. The bombing took place off a bridge in Tahrir Square, an Iraqi police official said, according to the AP.
Also Thursday, the news agency of the Italian bishops' conference said a Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was found dead near the city of Mosul, where he was abducted last month. The SIR news agency quoted the auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, Monsignor Shlemon Warduni as saying the kidnappers had buried Rahho.
Rahho was abducted soon after he left Mass in Mosul. Three people who had been with him died by the kidnappers. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraqi Christians have been targeted by radical groups who label them "crusaders" loyal to U.S. occupation troops.
In other violence, five members of an Awakening Council were killed when gunmen attacked two separate checkpoints near Tikrit on Thursday, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Nine others were wounded. A suicide bomber also attacked an Awakening Council gathering in the village of Zab outside Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad. Three people were killed and seven others wounded in that attack.
