A car bomb in a parking lot in central Baghdad killed nine people and injured 17 on Thursday, with the building also set ablaze, police said. According to Reuters, the bomb exploded in a busy commercial area near al-Russafi Square in the heart of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, rescuers used bare hands and shovels Wednesday to claw through clay houses shattered by a number of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war.
The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect. The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border trapped entire families beneath mud bricks. Entire neighborhoods were flattened.
Death estimates ranged widely, the AP reported. Zayan Othman, health minister for Iraq's nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said 250 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and 350 people were injured. But the death toll was put as high as 500 by some local officials, including Hashim al-Hamadani, a senior provincial security official; Kifah Mohammed, director of Sinjar hospital; and Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.
