A suicide car bomber killed eight people and wounded 25 in an attack on an Internet cafe near the district of New Baghdad in the east of the Iraqi capital, police said tonight.
Earlier a car bomb targeting the traffic police chief of Kirkuk killed at least seven people and wounded 50 others today, the latest in a spate of attacks on senior police officials in northern Iraq.
Some of the victims were motorists who had been queueing at a fuel station in a Kurdish district of Kirkuk, a volatile multi-ethnic city. One police source said 10 cars had been set ablaze.
Brigadier-General Sarhat Qader, another senior policeman in Kirkuk, said seven people were killed and 50 wounded in the attack.
Elsewhere
13 suspected insurgents were killed in a US air strike, the US military said today.
The military claimed that among the victims of the attack west of Baghdad were three members of al-Qaeda in Iraq responsible for the assassination of a Sunni Arab preacher
The strike came hours after Abu Bilal, who had been preaching against Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda, was killed.
Al-Qaeda has vowed to increase attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends at the weekend, especially against Iraqi and US security forces and against Sunni Arab tribal leaders who have been co-operating with the US military.
Earlier today, an "indirect fire" attack on a major US military base in the Iraqi capital Baghdad overnight killed two coalition forces members and wounded 38 others. Indirect fire attacks usually refer to mortars or rockets.
"It was a parked car bomb which exploded as my convoy passed by," a Iraqi military spokesman said.