(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-13 22:44

BAGHDAD -- A parked car bomb exploded in a commercial district of central Baghdad Thursday, killing 11 people and wounding 57, police said.

Iraqis carry the coffin of sheik Abid al-Haidari, an official of the office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during his funeral in Basra, Iraq, Wednesday, March 12, 2008. al-Haidari was killed earlier Wednesday by unknown gunmen in a drive-by shooting in Basra. [Agencies]

The bombing took place off a bridge in Tahrir Square, a district of clothing shops just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the US Embassy and much of the Iraqi government, an Iraqi police official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release the information.

The policeman and a hospital official said 11 people died. The hospital official said 57 had been injured.

The attack is the latest in a string of violence to grip Iraq's capital after several months of relative calm that followed a surge of US forces last year.

The US military on Thursday also said soldiers had killed a young Iraqi girl after firing a warning shot at a woman who "appeared to be signaling to someone" along a road where several bombs had recently been found.

The shooting on Wednesday afternoon occurred in the volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad. An exact location was not given in a military statement.

The girl appeared to be "around 10 years old," said Maj. Brad Leighton, a military spokesman.

In its statement, the military said that "coalition forces fired a warning shot into a berm near a suspicious woman who appeared to be signaling to someone while the soldiers were in the area. A young girl was found behind the berm suffering from a gunshot wound."

Leighton, however, said preliminary reports indicated that soldiers didn't believe the woman posed a threat of being a suicide bomber, but rather "they were afraid she was signaling to someone that the convoy was going by."

   1 2   

   1 2