Wave of Baghdad car blasts kill 40

NEARLY 40 people have died in a rash of car bombings in Iraq’s capital in the space of 12 hours, including four co-ordinated blasts early yesterday in central Baghdad that killed 15 and wounded 28 more, police said.

Yesterday’s carnage in the capital’s Karradah area came on the heels of bloodshed the day before that included four car bombs exploding within minutes of one another. At least 23 people were killed in western Baghdad’s Shula neighbourhood and a nearby suburb. Nineteen were killed in Shula alone.

Most residents of Karradah and Shula are from Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, while the insurgents are almost exclusively Sunni Arabs, a minority that had dominated Iraq until Saddam Hussein’s ousting two years ago.