At least 11 killed in Baghdad bomb attacks

A car bomb and a suicide attacker killed at least 11 people in Baghdad today as militants showed increasing defiance to a major security operation in the Iraqi capital.

More than 100 people have been killed in the Baghdad area since Sunday in a direct challenge to efforts by US and Iraqi forces to restore some authority on the streets and give the embattled government some breathing room.

The attacks came during the busy morning rush for goods and fuel. A car rigged with explosives tore through a line of cars at a fuel station in the Sadiyah district in south-western Baghdad. At least six people were killed and 14 injured, police said.

The neighbourhood is mixed between the majority Shiites and Sunnis, whose militant factions are blamed for many of the recent bombings and attacks.

Later, a suicide attacker drove a bomb-laden car into a vegetable market near a Shiite enclave in southern Baghdad.

At least five people were killed and seven injured, police said. The same market in the mostly Sunni Dora district was targeted last month by three car bombs that killed 10 people.

Outside Baghdad, nearly 150 people were admitted to hospital complaining of breathing problems, vomiting and other ailments after a truck carrying a chlorine-based substance was hit by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, said Brigadier General Qassim Moussawi, a military spokesman.

Two people died in the blast and the others were treated after being exposed to fumes and debris near Taji, about 12 miles north-west of Baghdad, Moussawi said. All those treated were in stable condition.

Yesterday, insurgents staged a bold daylight assault against a US combat post north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and injuring 17.

The US military called it a “co-ordinated attack” that began with a suicide car bombing and gunfire on soldiers pinned down in a former Iraqi police station, where fuel-storage tanks were set ablaze by the blast.

The head-on attack in the town of Tarmiyah, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, was notable for both its tactics and its target.

Sunni insurgents have mostly used hit-and-run ambushes, roadside bombs or mortars on US troops and stayed away from direct assaults on fortified military compounds to avoid US firepower.

US forces have set up cordons throughout Tarmiyah and launched searches for insurgent hideouts.

Mohammed al-Askari, spokesman for Iraq’s defence ministry, blamed the attack on a cell of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for many high-profile strikes. “It’s their work,” he said.

Altogether, nine US service members have been reported killed since the beginning of the weekend, six of them yesterday.