An explosion near an Iraqi army recruitment center in west Baghdad killed at least 21 people and injured at least 27 on Tuesday, according to hospital officials, cited by Reuters. According to hospital officials, all the victims appeared to be young men.
In the meantime, resistance fighters ambushed a convoy of an Iraqi politician in western Baghdad on Tuesday, killing two of his sons, police said. They said Mithal al-Alusi, secretary-general of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, had survived the attack. Last year, al-Alusi visited Israel and suggested to recognize the Jewish State.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, police said a bomb outside a popular restaurant killed one Iraqi.
Three Iraqi soldiers and two fighters were killed in a firefight on a road leading south from Baghdad to the city of Hilla, the Iraqi army said.
Meanwhile, four Egyptian engineers who had been abducted in the Iraqi capital have been freed, as a new Internet statement by the alleged holders of Italian reporter Giuliani Sgrena has raised hopes she could also be released soon.
An Islamist group that claims it is holding the correspondent for Italy's left-wing daily Il Manifesto and had threatened to kill her, said in an Internet statement that she would be freed soon.
"After the religious committee in the Organization for Jihad investigated Giuliana Sgrena, it was established unquestionably that the Italian captive is not spying for the infidels in the Land of Two Rivers," the statement said.
Sgrena's colleagues and supporters had emphasised after her kidnapping that
she had opposed the 2003 US-led invasion. The statement said that, in response to an appeal by the top Sunni Muslim religious organisation in Iraq, "we in the Organisation for Jihad will release the Italian captive in the next few days." The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.
