A car bomb hit a mainly Shiite area in central Baghdad on Monday, killing at least two Iraqis, officials said. The car was parked near a residential building across the street from a government office that issues national identification cards in the Karradah neighborhood when it went off just before noon, the officials said, according to the AP.
Iraqi police and hospital officials said two men and a woman were killed and seven people were wounded in the attack. The U.S. military said its initial assessment was that al-Qaeda in Iraq was behind the attack. It said two civilians were killed and 15 were wounded.
Earlier Monday, a mortar round apparently aimed at an Iraqi military base missed its target and slammed into a house in northwestern Baghdad, killing one man and wounding four others, police said.
An American soldier was killed Sunday when his patrol came under small-arms fire in Baghdad, the military said Monday.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have pressed Iraqi leaders to make progress on the political front and said expected provincial elections will be crucial to national unity efforts. But Iraqi lawmakers remained stalled over legislation needed to schedule the vote for local councils in the nation's 18 provinces.
Wissam al-Zubaidi, a spokesman for deputy parliament speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, said Monday's session was adjourned until Tuesday because of a lack of a quorum. Many Shiite legislators did not attend the session because they were observing the anniversary of the death of Imam Ali, the seventh century cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and the founder of the Shiite faith.
