Car bomb strikes north Iraq market, killing 7

updated 7:13 a.m. ET July 3, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded in a market in the northern city of Mosul on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding 22, police said.

The attack was aimed at a police patrol but missed its target and hit the market instead.

At least seven civilians were killed and 22 were wounded, Dr. Baha al-Bakri of the Mosul General Hospital said. Five cars also were left charred, police said.

Elsewhere, a mortar struck a popular market in northeastern Baghdad, wounding three people, police Capt. Ali al-Obeidi said.

Attacks increase in southern Iraq
A roadside bomb also struck a British armored vehicle Monday morning near Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, British spokeswoman Capt. Kelly Goodall said. Nobody was wounded but the vehicle was heavily damaged.

The attack underscored the increasing danger facing coalition forces in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq, which has been relatively quiet during a more than three-year-old Sunni-led insurgency but has seen an increase in attacks in recent months.

A self-styled Shiite Muslim insurgent group has pledged to fight American, British and other coalition forces but to spare Iraqi civilians and soldiers.

“We have been patient enough and we have given the political process a chance,” the Islamic Resistance in Iraq — Abbas Brigades said in a videotape aired Sunday by a Lebanese TV station.

Also Monday, people in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad ventured back out onto the streets a day after fierce clashes between Iraqi soldiers and gunmen. The clashes broke out after attackers fired nine rockets, some of which landed near the country’s most revered Sunni shrine, the Grand Imam Abu Hanifa mosque, and lasted about three hours, witnesses said.

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