A parked car bomb struck an open-air market northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than two dozen, police said. The blast reported just after noon as the commercial area was packed with shoppers in Balad Ruz, police said.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed a police officer and a relative as they were driving in Baiyaa, a neighborhood in western Baghdad.
In Baghdad itself, US helicopter gunships strafed Shiite gunmen preparing to fire a volley of rockets at the fortified Green Zone, killing four of them and foiling the attack, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl said, according to AFP.
Meanwhile, the U.S. casualty toll mounted for May as a soldier wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad last Wednesday was reported to have died of his wounds, raising the month's death toll to at least 127. Four more US soldiers were killed in separate attacks on Saturday, the military said, after two of its toughest months since the war started four years ago.
