Baghdad hit by twin car bombs

Twin car bombs in the Iraqi capital Baghdad have killed 18 people and wounded 42, many of them women or traffic police, the Baghdad operations command said. The bombs exploded within minutes of each other at abot 11.30am (8.30am GMT) in the Al-Yarmuk neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a security official said. The vehicles were parked close to government offices where identity cards and passports are issued, and large queues of people had formed to seek renewals.

Traffic police offices and a branch of the Iraqi Commercial Bank also lie nearby in the same square which was thronged with people on the first day of the working week. "The bank branch was seriously damaged," the security official said. The bombings came hot on the heels of a string of attacks in the capital on Saturday evening. Three roadside bombs planted in Hurriya, a Shiite neighbourhood in the north of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 16, a security official said.

Fire from a Katyusha multiple rocket launcher killed three people and wounded four in al Obeidi, an anarchic Shiite slum district in the far east of the capital beyond the sprawling Shiite bastion of Sadr City, an official said. And in the Zayouna neighbourhood of central Baghdad, police found the bodies of five women. A security official said they were believed to have been killed two or three weeks ago.

There has been a spate of attacks recently by hardline Islamists against women accused of breaking the mores of their ultra-strict brand of the Muslim religion. *AFP