By ANTARA,
Baghdad : A spate of car bombings in Baghdad killed at least 34 people and wounded 139 on Monday, security officials said, updating an earlier toll.
A total of six car bombs shattered the city`s fragile security situation as Baghdad witnessed the worst violence since a suicide bomber killed 33 people in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of the capital on March 10.
One of the bombs on Monday rocked the central Allawi district, killing six people and wounding 25 others. Most of the victims were workers waiting for jobs, a defence ministry official said.
During the morning rush hour 10 people were killed and 65 wounded when a booby-trapped car exploded in a market area of the impoverished Shiite district of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.
A car bomb targeting the convoy of a senior interior ministry official killed one civilian and a policeman and wounded six other policemen in the southeastern Shiite neighbourhood of New Baghdad.
The official, a brigadier general identified as Sadun, was unhurt.
And in Hussainiya, in the city`s far northeast, four people were killed and 20 were wounded when a vehicle exploded near a market.
Twin car bombs near a popular medical clinic and a crowded bazaar killed 12 and wounded 23 in the west of the city after noon, defence and interior ministry officials said.
Also on Monday, seven Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a man exploded a suicide vest inside the house they were raiding in Balad, about 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Baghdad.
An American soldier was killed on Monday in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, a US military statement said.