Car bomb kills 25, wounds 80 in Baghdad

A car bombed ripped through a commercial district in western Baghdad on Sunday, killing 25 people and wounding at least 80 others, in one of the deadliest attacks in the capital in recent days.

The blast occurred about noon in the mixed Baiyaa neighborhood, the scene of frequent sectarian violence including a bombing and mortar attack last week that killed seven people. The bombing Sunday came amid an 11-week crackdown by U.S.-led forces intended to bring stability to Baghdad.

The attack was part of a wave of violence across Iraq Sunday that killed at least 32 people.

Insurgents exploded an earlier car bomb outside a police station in the town of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, killing two police and a bystander and injuring three other police officers.

A few minutes later, militants in the town attacked a police checkpoint near the al-Askari shrine, killing another police officer, police said.

Iraqi police and soldiers are often targeted by insurgents, who see them as collaborators with U.S.-led forces trying to stabilize Iraq.

Also Sunday, a battle between unidentified gunmen and Iraqi forces in a market in the town of Baqouba 35 miles northeast of Baghdad left two civilians dead and injured a third civilian and a police officer, police said.

In the town of Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb outside a teacher's house killed three of his children, all of them under the age of 10, police said. The parents were not injured in the attack.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen shot and killed two brothers in a western Baghdad neighborhood in a drive-by shooting, police said.

In the town of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car shot and killed a man who had been a colonel in the former Iraqi army as he was standing near his house, police said.

A bomb exploded in a market in the village of al Asriyah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, wounding 13 civilians, four of them seriously, police said.

Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of three men, who were blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in the Tigris River in the town of Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad.