A suicide bomber driving a fuel truck killed 50 people in one of several car bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday. Police said the suicide bomber was driving a fuel truck packed with explosives in the attack in Mansour district of western Baghdad that injured 60 people apart from the 50 killed.
According to Reuters, they said the bomber lured motorists queueing for petrol to his truck after earlier saying he had rammed into the line of vehicles.
Earlier, a suicide car bomb killed 20 people in a commercial district close to a popular ice-cream parlour in central Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.
The bomb in a four-wheel drive vehicle exploded near a petrol station and electronics shops close to al-Hurriya Square in the predominantly Shi'ite Karrada district on the eastern side of the Tigris River. Another 40 people were hurt, police said, according to Reuters.
In southern Baghdad, a parked car bomb killed three people and injured five in Doura district, police said.
Separately, the U.S. military said three of its troops had been killed and another six injured by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday. Their deaths took the total of U.S. soldiers killed in July to at least 77, still the lowest monthly toll for the U.S. military in Iraq since last November and the lowest since the build-up of 30,000 extra U.S. troops began in February.
On the political front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, the Accordance Front, has decided to pull out after Iraqi premier Nuri al Maliki declined to meet a list of demands, including a greater say in security matters. Maliki's Shi'ite-led government has already been weakened by the withdrawal of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, one of the biggest groups in parliament.
"The Accordance Front is announcing that is withdrawing from the government of Nuri al-Maliki and its deputy prime minister and the five ministers will present today their resignations," Accordance Front official Rafei Issawi told a news conference.
