Car bomb kills at least nine Iraqis near mosque

A car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Baghdad today, killing at least nine civilians, police said.

The blast occurred at 8.45am in the mostly Shiite neighbourhood of Kamaliyah, said police Capt Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

Iraqi and US forces rushed in and closed off the area, said Abdul-Ghani.

He said it wasn’t immediately known if the parked car bomb had caused any damage to the small mosque.

Abdul-Ghani said 10 civilians were killed and 12 wounded, but another policeman, Maj Mahir Hamad, said nine were killed and 22 wounded.

It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different casualty figures.

On April 16, a bomb hidden in a shopping bag on a minibus exploded near the Kamaliyah mosque, killing at least three passengers and wounding six, police said.

The poor area of Baghdad appeared to be the latest victim of widespread sectarian violence in the capital involving Sunni Arabs and Shiites.

On November 23, suspected Sunni insurgents carried out the deadliest single attack of the Iraq war by using bombs and mortars to kill 215 people in the capital’s Shiite slum of Sadr City.