More than 20 people died Monday in bombings and clashes in Iraq, including 10 civilians killed when a car bomb went off in Baghdad, security sources said.
The car bomb exploded Monday at 3:30 pm, ripping through the main shopping street of western Baghdad's mixed neighbourhood of Jadida, one security source told AFP. Ten civilians were killed and another 15 people injured in the attack.
In northeastern Baghdad, a suicide bomber strapped with explosives killed two people and around 20 passengers on a mini-bus in the largely Shiite neighbourhood of Talbyia, a security source said.
Another three people died in sporadic clashes between Iraqi security forces and militiamen from the Mahdi Army in the southern Shiite city of Samawa, a local police source said.
A suicide bomber attacked a police checkpoint at the entrance to a university in the city of Ramadi on Monday, killing three policemen and wounding three others, police and witnesses said. According to the AP, police said they had not determined whether the suicide bomber was wearing an belt laden with explosives or was driving a booby-trapped car. A curfew was imposed in the area.
Witnesses earlier said the dead were students, but police said that report was incorrect.
Also Monday, another suicide bomber blew up at an Iraqi army checkpoint south of Ramadi, and clashes then erupted between gunmen and soldiers, a police officer said.
Earlier, British and Iraqi forces seized one of the main police stations in Iraq's southern city of Basra on Monday because they said the Major Crimes Unit had become a "criminal enterprise". According to Reuters, British military spokesman Captain Tane Dunlop said the forces carried out medical assessments of detainees at the building before transferring them to another police station.
"We (then) used explosives to put the building beyond use so it can no longer be used by the criminal enterprise," he said. Another British military spokesman, Major Charlie Burbridge, said many detainees had been found to have injuries.
Leaders of the station's serious crimes unit were suspected of involvement with local death squads, and seven were apprehended three days ago in British military raids, said Lt. Jenny Saleh of the British Royal Navy in Basra. According to press reports, seven gunmen were killed by the British fire.
One US soldier was killed in a Baghdad bomb attack on Christmas Day while, the US military has announced. The soldier was killed and two others wounded on Monday when a roadside bomb exploded alongside one of their vehicles while their unit was patrolling a southern neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital, a statement said Monday.
Meanwhile, a string of bombings claimed the lives of six U.S. soldiers in an around Baghdad over the weekend. Three members of the U.S. 89th Military Police Brigade were killed Saturday in east Baghdad when a roadside bomb detonated, the U.S. military said.
A fourth soldier, assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, died Saturday in a blast in Diyala, east of the Iraqi capital.
Two more U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday in separate roadside explosions near Baghdad, the U.S. military said. One of them died when a bomb went off southeast of the capital near a patrol searching for "suspected terrorists," the military said. Four other soldiers were hurt in that incident.
The sixth U.S. soldier was killed when a bomb exploded southwest of Baghdad, near a patrol delivering supplies to units in the area.
