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Three car bombings kill at least 26 in Iraq

A series of car bomb blasts tore through Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100.

As the car bombers struck, US forces kept up operations against rebel-held towns elsewhere aimed at establishing control throughout Iraq ahead of January elections. Air strikes were launched against suspected militants in Fallujah.

In the first explosion in Baghdad, a four-wheel-drive vehicle packed with explosives detonated outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the US Embassy and key Iraqi government offices, Interior Ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

Witnesses said the car exploded at 8:45am amid civilians milling around a recruitment site near a checkpoint at the western entrance to the complex

Yarmouk Hospital received 15 bodies and 81 wounded from the explosion, said Sabah Aboud, the facility's chief registration official.

"I was thrown 10 meters away and hit the wall," said Wissam Mohammed, 30, who was visiting a nearby recruiting center for Iraqi security forces.

He lay in a bed at Yarmouk Hospital, his right hand broken, his head wrapped in bandages and his clothes stained with blood.

The second car bomb exploded at 9:45am, near a number of major hotels, Abdul-Rahman said. American and Iraqi forces opened fire after the blast, but it was not immediately clear what they were shooting at, witnesses said.

At least six people were killed and 15 wounded, said Tahsin al-Freiji of the US-trained Facility Protection Service, which guards major installations in Baghdad.

Speaking at the scene, al-Freiji said a pickup truck loaded with dates plowed into a convoy of three four-wheel-drive vehicles as they emerged from a parking area behind the hotels and exploded. Two vehicles escaped but one was destroyed in the blast.

Minutes later, unidentified gunmen began shooting from the rooftops and police returned fire, said Tahsin al-Kaabi, another member of the Facility Protection Service.

The pickup truck carrying the explosives was ripped in half, with one part dangling from a shop sign on the opposite side of the street.

At least five other cars were charred, including one of the targeted four-wheel-drive vehicles which had a burned body left sitting in the front passenger seat. Another man was thrown against a garage wall, his body crumpled in the street. A head and other body parts were strewn in the road amid shards of glass.

"I was on my way to work. We heard a big boom and I briefly passed out," said Razaq Hadi, 36, who was riding a minibus that was damaged in the blast. "I saw seven of the passengers who were seriously wounded being taken out through the broken windows."

No coalition troops were killed in either bombing, officials said.

In the third attack, a car bomb exploded outside a primary school in the northern city of Mosul, killing seven people, including two children, police said. Eleven people were wounded.

The car, driven by two men, may have exploded prematurely, a US officer at the scene said, as there was no obvious target in the area, a quiet district in the south of the city.

In Baquba, a police commander was assassinated in an early morning drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen, police said. Insurgents also fired mortar rounds at Baquba's municipal building, killing one person and wounding seven in the city 57km northeast of Baghdad.

There were assassinations in Baghdad, where gunmen killed a senior official of Iraq's Sciences and Technology Ministry and a female employee near the southeastern Zayona suburb, Abdul-Rahman said.

In rebel-held Fallujah, US warplanes unleashed strikes on two houses early yesterday, killing at least 11 people, including women and children, hospital officials said.

Meanwhile, residents of Samarra tried to bury their dead yesterday -- the cemetery was off limits on Sunday -- moving through the streets waving white flags tied to sticks.
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