World

3 Car Bombs Rock Baghdad

July 24, 2007 / 4:50 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Three parked cars exploded in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 19, according to police, and the U.S. military said car bombs had killed three troops over the weekend.

A U.S. soldier with a task force operating south of Baghdad also died of wounds sustained Sunday.

Monday's first explosion targeted a passing police patrol, killing six people — three policemen and three pedestrians — and wounding nine other people, a police officer said.

At least seven cars also were damaged in the blast, which struck near to the Interior Ministry's nationality and social affairs directorate and the 14th of July bridge in Karradah, he added.

Another parked car bomb about 500 yards away struck at about the same time, ripping through a bustling market of vegetables and household goods, killing three civilians and wounding five others, the policeman added.

AP Television News footage showed U.S. soldiers milling about the charred wreckage, with shattered glass and blackened debris from nearby shops and street stalls strewn on the bloodstained pavement.

Another car packed with explosives struck a police patrol in Elway square in another part of Karradah, killing two policemen and a civilian and wounding five people, police said.

Karradah, a popular shopping area, has been hit by several high-profile bombings, and Monday's attack occurred despite a 5-month-old U.S.-Iraqi security operation aimed at stopping such violence in the capital.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed Saturday in attacks in Baghdad and the northern city of Samarra, while a third, with Task Force Marne, died of wounds sustained in a blast south of Baghdad on Sunday.

At least 3,635 members of the U.S. military who have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The soldiers' identities were not released pending notification of relatives.

The deaths raised to at least 3,634 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A roadside bomb also was aimed at an Iraqi police patrol Monday but missed its target, killing a civilian and wounding two others in the southern Shiite area of Hillah, another officer said.

In other developments:

Gunmen opened fire on an open-air market in Iskandariyah, killing a man and his wife as well as a policeman who started firing at them, another officer said. Three bullet-riddled bodies of men in civilian clothes also were found at a construction site in Iskandariyah, a mostly Sunni Arab city 30 miles south of Baghdad, police said. The men, ages 25 to 35, had been bound by their hands and legs and bore signs of torture.

Iran's ambassador to Baghdad has confirmed that the United States and Iran will discuss the security situation in Iraq on Tuesday in Baghdad, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Tehran and Washington held groundbreaking talks in late May on the same subject, marking a break in a 27-year diplomatic freeze. CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports White House spokesman Tony Snow said crocker will renew U.S. concerns about the movement of bombs, missiles and foreign fighters from Iran into Iraq.

Every week U.S. commander General David Petraeus heads out to what the military calls "the battle space" to look, talk and listen to his subordinates in the field. "There's no substitute for being out on the ground talking to the leaders who are actually doing it," Petraeus told CBS News in an exclusive interview. All information is valuable to Petraeus, and, while the troops' morale is invariably described as "high," it's not something their commanding officer takes for granted.

The safety of Iraq's pre-eminent Shiite cleric is in question after one of his close aides was stabbed to death in the Muslim leader's compound in the holy city of Najaf, a place beset by unsolved murders and believed to be infiltrated by insurgents. Najaf's police chief, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim al-Mayahi, said late Sunday that authorities had arrested the alleged killer — a security guard at the compound of the much-revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.