Three bombs went off Wednesday within an hour in Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and wounding many more, police said. Four others died when mortar rounds hit their homes in a nearby town Wednesday.
According to the AP, a car bomb exploded in the city's mostly Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood, killing at least 23 people and injuring 58, said police Lt. Ali Abbas.
Shortly earlier, a device hidden under a car detonated as a police patrol was passing near the downtown Tahrir Square, said Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, an Interior Ministry official. The blast missed the patrol but killed three civilians and injured 15, said police Lt. Ali Mitab.
Another car bomb went off in the eastern suburb of Kamaliyah. There were no reports of casualties. The mortar shells fell on three houses in the mixed Sunni-Shiite town of Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three civilians, police Capt. Rashid al-Samaraie said. According to the AP, a fifth mortar shell hit the mixed Qadisiyah neighborhood in west Baghdad, killing a woman and wounding a child, Mahmoud said.
Civil war warning
A civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, the US National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said Tuesday. "If chaos were to descend upon Iraq or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country ... this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region and, indeed, the world," Negroponte said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
In the past, Negroponte served as U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.
Negroponte acknowledged a civil war would be a "serious setback" to the global war on "terror." "The consequences for the people of Iraq would be catastrophic," he said. "Clearly, it would seriously jeopardize the democratic political process on which they are presently embarked. And one can only begin to imagine what the political outcomes would be."
Saudi Arabia and Jordan could support Iraq's Sunnis, Negroponte said. And Iran "has already got quite close ties with some of the extremist elements" inside Iraq, he added.
While Iraq's neighbors "initially might be reluctant" to get involved in a broader Sunni-Shiite conflict, "that might well be a temptation," Negroponte said.
Earlier, President Bush condemned the surge in violence and said Iraqis must make a choice between "a free society or a society dictated ... by evil people who will kill innocents." Later, in an interview with ABC News' "World News Tonight," he stated he did not believe the escalation in Iraq would lead to a general civil war.
