41 killed in Iraq car bombs

BAGHDAD - A SERIES of apparently co-ordinated car bombs targeting police across Iraq on Wednesday killed 41 people, including women and children, one day after the US military confirmed a major troop reduction.

In Baghdad, a suicide car attacker blew up his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern suburb of Qahira, killing 15 people, including two women, two children and two police, and wounding dozens, security and medical officials said.

The attack in the mixed Sunni and Shiite neighbourhood took place around 8 am (5:03 pm S'pore time), according to an interior ministry official who gave the toll.

In an equally lethal attack, a car bomb at a passport office in Kut, 160 km southeast of Baghdad, killed 15 people, including at least 10 police, and wounded 45 people, most of them police, Lieutenant Ali Hussein told AFP.

A series of car bomb attacks in five other towns and cities raised the nationwide toll to 41, and almost 200 wounded.

A spike in unrest over the past two months has triggered concern that Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle security on their own, and with no new government formed in Baghdad since a March 7 general election.