Middle East

Car bombing in Baghdad market kills 25

(AP)
Updated: 2007-05-22 22:33

Violence was reported elsewhere in the capital Tuesday.

A few minutes before the bombing in Amil, gunmen in two cars drove through the nearby Khadra neighborhood and ambushed a civilian car carrying three plainclothes police from the major crimes unit, killing two and wounding the third, police said.

Police and other Iraqi security officers have been heavily targeted by insurgents, who accuse them of collaborating with US-led forces in the country.

Another police officer was killed when a roadside bomb exploded next to a police patrol driving through an eastern Baghdad neighborhood, police said. Three other officers were wounded.

In the Sunni-dominated Waziriya neighborhood in northern Baghdad, gunmen disguised as soldiers set up a fake checkpoint and stopped a minibus bringing college students to the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. The militants killed eight of the students and wounded three others, police said.

Later Tuesday, two mortar shells slammed into a teacher's college affiliated with Baghdad University, killing three students and injuring seven, police said.

And in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a sniper shot two civilians, killing one and wounding the other, police said.

The violence came as US politicians debated how long US troops will remain in Iraq. A senior American official warned Monday that the Bush administration may reconsider its support if Iraqi leaders do not make major reforms by fall.

The US official, who briefed reporters on condition his name not be published, did not say what actions could be taken by the White House, but his comments reflected the Bush administration's need to show results in Iraq - as an answer to pressure by the Democrats in Congress seeking to set timetables on the US military presence.