IRAQ - July 23 - Wave Of Car Bombings Hammers Baghdad.

At least 17 people are killed and dozens are wounded by a wave of car bombings in Baghdad on Monday, most of them in a predominantly Shi'ite district. Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, meanwhile, confirmed that the US and Iran would discuss the security situation in Iraq on July 24 in Baghdad, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "The composition of the negotiating teams will include ambassadors of Iran and America in Baghdad, as head of the two teams, with observance of Iraqi officials", the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Hasan Kazemi Qomi as saying July 23. Tension between the two countries has risen over Tehran's detention of four Iranian-American scholars and activists charged with endangering national security. The US has demanded their release, saying the charges against them are false. At the same time, Tehran has called for the release of five Iranians detained in Iraq, whom the US says are the operations chief and other members of Iran's Quds Force, a unit of the Revolutionary Guard that Washington has accused of arming and training Iraqi militants. Iran says the five are diplomats in Iraq with permission of the government. The US military also reported the deaths of three American soldiers over the weekend in separate roadside bombings. Two were killed July 21 in attacks in Baghdad and the northern city of Samarra, while the third died of wounds sustained in a blast south of Baghdad on Sunday. At least 3,635 members of the US military have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count. On July 23, two of the blasts in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada struck nearly simultaneously. One targeted a passing police patrol, killing three officers and three pedestrians and wounding nine passers-by, a police officer said. Another car bomb parked about 455 meters, or 1,500 feet, away struck at about the same time, ripping through a bustling market selling vegetables and household goods, killing at least three civilians and wounding five others, the policeman said. Another car packed with explosives blew up about 200 meters from an entry point to the Green Zone, killing at least four Iraqis and wounding seven, a police officer said. The heavily fortified Green Zone is home to the US and British embassies as well as Iraqi government offices and thousands of US troops and contractors. Elsewhere in the capital, a bomb exploded on a minibus near a busy commercial area, killing one person and wounding nine others, the police said. Near the Iranian border, gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks loaded with goods being sent from major wholesale markets in Baghdad to Khanaqin, 145 kilometers, or 90 miles, northeast of Baghdad. Five people were killed and three were kidnapped, including drivers and guards, the police said. In western Anbar Province, security officials said at least two policemen were killed and 10 were wounded when a woman hiding an explosives belt under her Islamic gown blew herself up as she was about to be searched at a checkpoint on the western outskirts of Ramadi. In all, at least 42 people killed nationwide, said security officials who asked not to be identified because they feared retribution.