Baghdad car bomb kills 18

A car bomb in a commercial district of central Baghdad killed 18 people and wounded dozens more today.

The explosion happened in Tahrir Square, an area of clothing shops just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the US Embassy and much of the Iraqi government.

The attack is the latest in a string of violence to grip Iraq’s capital after several months of relative calm that followed a surge of US forces last year.

Meanwhile the US military confirmed soldiers had killed a young Iraqi girl after firing a warning shot at a woman who “appeared to be signalling to someone” along a road where several bombs had recently been found.

The shooting yesterday afternoon happened in the volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad.

The girl appeared to be “around 10 years old,” said a military spokesman.

The military said that “coalition forces fired a warning shot into a berm near a suspicious woman who appeared to be signalling to someone while the soldiers were in the area. A young girl was found behind the berm suffering from a gunshot wound.”

Preliminary reports indicated that soldiers did not believe the woman posed a threat of being a suicide bomber, but rather “they were afraid she was signalling to someone that the convoy was going by.”