BAGHDAD (AFP) — A spate of bomb attacks across Iraq on Sunday targeting a bank, a town hall and military patrols killed at least 14 people, including a US soldier, security and hospital officials said.
The deadliest attack was in the Tarmiyah region just north of the Iraqi capital that killed four Iraqi civilians and the American soldier, according to a US military statement.
A bomber activated his suicide belt when a unit of US troops were arriving on the scene after the explosion of a homemade bomb. Fifteen civilians, three Iraqi police and two US soldiers were also wounded in the attack.
The death of the US soldier brought to 4,137 the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to a AFP toll based on the independent website icasualties.org.
In Khilani square in central Baghdad, a car bomb exploded as a military patrol escorting a finance ministry convoy passed by, killing an Iraqi soldier and two civilians, a security official said.
At least nine people were wounded in the attack, among them four soldiers.
At Maidan on the southern outskirts of the capital, an Iraqi soldier was killed and five others were wounded when their patrol was hit by a car bomb, the official said.
Also in the capital, a powerful bomb exploded outside a crowded bank, killing two people and wounding at least 10 others, police and hospital officials said.
The blast occurred as customers queued outside Rafidain Bank in Kamalia neighbourhood of east Baghdad mid-morning, the officials said.
At Khanakine, near the Iranian border 200 kilometres (125 miles) northeast of Baghdad, three civilians were killed and 20 wounded when a roadside bomb exploded outside the town hall, a military commander said.
Meanwhile, a security official said three projectiles hit Baghdad's highly-fortified Green Zone, seat of the Iraqi government and foreign embassies. He was not able to say whether there were any casualties.
Local US commanders say rocket and mortar fire usually originates from Sadr City, bastion of the Mahdi Army militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in eastern Baghdad.
They blame Iranian-trained and supplied Shiite militiamen for the attacks.
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