One killed in car bomb attack in Baghdad

One Iraqi civilian was killed and three others wounded when a car bomb went off in downtown Baghdad on Saturday afternoon, a police source said.

"A car bomb parking in the Iwadhiyah neighborhood in central Baghdad detonated after a police patrol passed by," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast killed a civilian and wounded three others, the source said, adding several civilian cars were damaged.

Earlier in the day, four people were killed and 15 others wounded when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive-belt blew himself up inside a mini-van near the Sarrafiyah Bridge in Baghdad's Karkh area, an Interior Ministry source said.

In a separate incident, a car bomb attack near a popular market in the al-Qahira neighborhood wounded four civilians, police said.

Meanwhile, another car bomb parking near the al-Ashrah al- Mubbasharah Sunni mosque in Baghdad's southern al-Amil neighborhood blew up before midday, wounding two civilians, police added.

The attacks came one day after Iraqi Shiite and Sunni clerics met Friday in Saudi Arabia's holiest Muslim city of Mecca and agreed to halt the growing sectarian bloodletting in their war- torn country.

The two rival sides reached the agreement in a signed 10-point document, under which "spilling Muslim blood is forbidden", at the end of their two-day Mecca meeting organized by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Source: Xinhua