A bomb devastated a minibus carrying students to their final exams in Baghdad today, one of a string of blasts across Iraq that killed 27 people just two days after the deadliest attack in more than a year.
The explosions came as US combat troops prepare to withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities by the end of June, sowing further doubts about the local security forces' ability to stand alone against a stubborn insurgency.
Blood and shattered glass covered the floor of the minibus in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad after a roadside bomb killed three high school students and wounded 12 others.
They had been on their way to sit for final exams before the summer holidays.
Elsewhere in the capital, a roadside bomb in a market killed three people and wounded 30 in the northern Shaab district, police said, while a parked car bomb killed five people and wounded 20 in Karrada in the city centre.
In Husseiniya, just north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a vegetable market this evening, killing five and wounding 25 others. Four children were among the wounded.
The blasts came two days after a suicide truck bomb outside a mosque near the northern city of Kirkuk killed 73 people in the country's deadliest attack for more than a year.
Reuters
