BAGHDAD, Oct 4: A series of car bomb blasts tore through Baghdad and the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100.
As the car bombers struck, US forces kept up operations against rebel-held towns elsewhere aimed at establishing control throughout the country ahead of January elections. Air strikes were launched against suspected militants in Falluja.
Islamic militants distributed a video to an international news agency showing the killings of two men who identified themselves as an Italian of Iraqi origin and a Turk. A militant who appeared in the video accused the two of spying.
They were shown blindfolded and kneeling in front of a ditch before being shot, a scene likely to raise fresh concern over the fate of foreign hostages in Iraq. They include British engineer Ken Bigley and two French journalists.
There was some positive news on the hostage front. An Iraqi militant group has released two Indonesian women hostages who were handed over on Monday to the United Arab Emirates embassy in Baghdad, Abu Dhabi Television reported.
In the first of the blasts in Baghdad, a car blew up near one of the entrances to the heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the Iraqi interim government, killing at least 15 people and wounding 80, a hospital official said.
No US troops were killed or wounded, a spokesman said. A second bomb exploded about an hour later as a US military convoy was passing along Sadoun Street, a major thoroughfare on the eastern side of the Tigris river, where several hotels used by foreign contractors are located.
Witnesses said a small truck charged towards a group of four-wheel-drive vehicles and detonated, destroying half a dozen cars, shattering scores of shop windows and spraying wreckage across the street. At least six people were killed and more than a dozen wounded, a source at Iraq's Interior Ministry said.
"I saw a head in one place and a leg in another. This was a suicide bombing," said one bystander as thick clouds of black smoke billowed behind him and US helicopters circled overhead.
The US military said no soldiers were killed or wounded. In Mosul, a car bomb exploded outside a primary school, killing five people, including two children, police said. Earlier police had said seven were killed. Eleven people were wounded, including five children.
The car, driven by two men, may have exploded prematurely, a U.S. officer at the scene said, as there was no obvious target in the area, a quiet district in the south of the city. -Reuters