A suicide truck bomber hit a crowded public market in the northern city of Tal Afar late Tuesday, killing at least 17 people and wounding 35, police said.
Officials said the blast occurred near closing time as people packed the market to finish their shopping.
Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists on Tuesday condemned the killing of an Iraqi reporter and a media worker whose bodies were discovered south of Baghdad on Monday. Violence continued with the discovery of the headless corpses of three Iraqi soldiers floating in the Tigris River, the AP reported.
Laith al-Dulaimi, a reporter for the privately owned TV station Al-Nahrain, and Muazaz Ahmed Barood, a telephone operator for the station, were abducted by men disguised as police officers while driving home to Madain, a town 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, said Abdulkarim al-Mehdawi, the station's general manager.
Their bodies were found at al-Wihda district, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Both men, in their late 20s, had been shot in the chest, al-Mehdawi said.
In other violence reported by police Tuesday, two drive-by shootings killed three Iraqis in Baghdad. The tortured bodies of 12 Iraqis were found, four in the capital, one in northern Iraq, and seven in a river 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb hit a police car in Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding two.
