Two suicide car bombs exploded in central Baghdad yesterday, killing at least seven Iraqis, as 1,000 US Marines backed by aircraft continued their large-scale offensive against insurgents in northwestern Iraq.
Seven Iraqis were killed and 23 wounded in the first attack in a busy central Baghdad street, when a suicide car bomb went off just as a US military convoy of Humvees and armored vehicles was passing at 9:40 am , an interior ministry official said.
Witnesses said the bomb missed its target but set several nearby vehicles ablaze, plunging the neighborhood in all too familiar scenes of chaos as Iraqi police fired shots in the air and firemen tried to douse the flames.
A US military spokeswoman, Captain Kelly Lewis, confirmed the car-bomb attack, saying it apparently targeted an Iraqi army patrol, wounding at least 10 Iraqis and three American soldiers.
The blast shook downtown Baghdad and sent plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky near the Baghdad Hotel.
Three policemen were hurt when a separate suicide car bomb targeted a small base for a river patrol unit by the Tigris river in the southern Jadriya neighborhood, the official said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of US Marines continued their ground and air assault, code-named "Operation Matador" in a desert area near the Syrian border described a s a sanctuary for rebels loyal to Iraq's most-wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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