Car bomb explodes while being defused in Sadr City

Explosives planted in a car went off while police were trying to defuse them in Sadr City, killing two policemen and wounding four civilians, police said today amid reports that more car bombs were targeting the Shiite slum.

The blast occurred at 11:30pm yesterday on al-Fallah St in the sprawling district in eastern Baghdad, police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said, giving the casualty toll.

He said explosives experts successfully defused a second car bomb in the same area.

Another police officer said authorities had stepped up security in Sadr City after receiving tips that 10 car bombs had entered the area and militants were trying to smuggle more in.

The officer said the number of police patrols and checkpoints had been increased and police were intensifying searches of cars entering the district.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that it had received tips about car bombs aimed at Sadr City from people calling into a terror hotline.

Sadr City, which houses some 2.5 million people, is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia that is loyal to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has been blamed in some of the country’s worst sectarian violence.

Elsewhere in the capital, gunmen stormed a boys’ school in the south-western Alam neighbourhood, killing a Shiite guard, police said.

Two mortar shells also landed on a rural area on the edge of the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, wounding three people and causing a huge fire, police said.