10 dead in Iraq car bomb blast

A parked car bomb struck an open-air market north-east of Baghdad today, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than two dozen, police said.

The blast happened just after noon as the commercial area was packed with shoppers in Balad Ruz, police said, giving the casualty toll.

Balad Ruz is a predominantly Shiite enclave in the volatile Diyala province that has recently faced a campaign of violence and intimidation by suspected Sunni insurgents.

A suicide bomber also struck a cafe in the city, 45 miles north-east of Baghdad, on March 7, killing 30 people.

Gunmen also killed a police officer and a relative as they were driving in Baiyaa, a neighbourhood in western Baghdad that has seen a recent rise in sectarian violence despite a US-Iraqi security crackdown aimed at stopping such attacks.

The violence came a day after a vital bridge link between Baghdad and northern Iraq was devastated by a bombing, and hours of mortar barrages killed eight people in a Sunni neighbourhood of the capital that is surrounded by Shiites.

The US casualty toll mounted for May, third-deadliest month for Americans in the four-year-old war: A soldier wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad last Wednesday was reported to have died of his wounds, raising the month's death toll to at least 127.

Tensions have heightened in recent weeks in northern Iraq as Turkey has built up its military forces on Iraq's border, a move clearly meant to pressure Iraq to rein in the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, separatists who launch raids into south-east Turkey's Kurdish region from hideouts in Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, ending a visit to the Kurdish north on Saturday, also sought to ease the growing tensions but warned his government won't allow the relatively peaceful area "to be turned into a battleground".

"If there are some problems, we should not rely on weapons and threats, or use violence and power because this will increase tension and deepen problems," he told a news conference in the regional capital of Irbil.