A car bomb went off in a shopping district of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least six Iraqis and setting fire to an apartment building, police said. Seven other people were wounded in the blast.
Two other bombs detonated in the capital, missing a senior Iraqi security official and a U.S. patrol. Maj. Gen. Rashid Feleih, the commander of a special Interior Ministry security force, narrowly escaped when a roadside bomb hit his four-car convoy, damaging one vehicle, said police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim.
In southern Iraq, a British soldier was killed in fighting, the British government said, according to The AP.
Late on Sunday, a video of Iraq's latest foreign hostage was released, showing an Australian who said he is married to an American and lives in California.
The showed a man identifying himself as Douglas Wood, 63, seated between two masked men pointing automatic weapons at him.
Wood said he was an Australian national living in the San Francisco area with his American wife. He said he arived in Iraq about a year ago to work on reconstruction projects with the American military.
The captive appealed to President Bush, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Californian Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order foreign forces out of Iraq and let Iraqis look after themselves, saying he did not want to die. "My captors are fiercely patriotic. They believe in a strong united Iraq looking after its own destiny," Wood said on the tape.
