May 03, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1428

BAGHDAD, May 2: A suicide bomber targeting a police patrol blew up a vehicle in the Baghdad district of Sadr City on Wednesday, killing 10 people and bringing the day's grim toll to 29, a security source said.Another 35 people were wounded when the bomber rammed the vehicle into the patrol not far from the Imam Ali hospital, the source said. At least two policemen were among the dead.

Car bombs targeting Iraq's majority Shia population, the hallmark of Al Qaeda militants, continue to detonate almost daily in Baghdad despite a two-month-old joint US-Iraqi security operation to stem the bloodshed.

“We've seen an uptick in the total number of car bomb attacks which have in some cases created some very spectacular casualty figures,” admitted US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox.

Sectarian death squad attacks, generally perpetrated by Shia militias in revenge for the car bombs, have been on the decline, he added.

A salvo of three mortar rounds slammed into a market in the southwest Baghdad neighbourhood of Abu Chir, killing three people and wounding eight.

South of Baghdad, a bomb ripped through a minibus in Mahmudiyah, killing 11 passengers, the town's mayor Muayad Fadhil said.

The minibus was en route from Baghdad to the mainly Shiite provincial capital of Hilla and was the second plying the route to be attacked in as many days. On Tuesday, gunmen killed 11 passengers on a minibus as it passed through the nearby town of Iskandiriyah.

A mortar attack against a primary school in Iskandiriyah on Wednesday killed a young girl and wounded her teacher, police Lieutenant Kadhim Kashash said.

Mortar fire against a residential district of Mahmudiyah killed three people and wounded 20.—AFP