A car bomb killed three people and injured five others in Baghdad's Sadr City section early Tuesday, a day after a bombing killed at least 33 people in this Shiite neighborhood.
The latest bomb exploded at about 8:30 a.m., killing two men and a woman driving past a local restaurant, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. The bombings have taken place despite the presence of American and Iraqi military checkpoints surrounding the district. U.S. and Iraqi troops set up new checkpoints at entrances to the neighborhood last week as they searched for a missing U.S. Army translator.
Later in the day, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered US and Iraqi units to lift a blockade around Sadr City. "The prime minister, in his capacity as commander in chief of the armed forces, has decided to lift the blockade of the access roads to Sadr City and other areas of Baghdad," a statement from Maliki's office said.
Another car bomb ripped through a wedding procession in northeastern Baghdad on Tuesday, killing up to 10 people, an Interior Ministry source said.
According to the AP, the U.S. army announced the deaths of two troops, raising the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq fighting this month to 103.
One Baghdad-based soldier died at about 5:00 p.m. on Monday after being hit by small arms fire in a western district of the capital. A second Baghdad-based soldier was killed at around 5:30 p.m. when the vehicle he was riding in was struck by a roadside bomb just south of Baghdad, the military said in a brief statement.
Iraqi security forces continued to suffer losses, with one policeman killed and three wounded Tuesday morning when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in the capital's southeastern New Baghdad neighborhood, police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun said.
A second officer, police commando unit commander Ali Abdul-Kadhim, was shot dead by unknown gunmen in a car while standing near his home in eastern Baghdad, police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani said.
The bodies of five unidentified people, including a woman, were found dumped early Tuesday morning in eastern Baghdad, police Maj. Mahir Hamid Mussa said.
