Car bombs kill 60 in Iraq
5 US soldiers die in another attack
Ap, Baghdad
Three suicide attackers detonated car bombs nearly simultaneously in a mainly Shia town north of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 60 people and wounding 70 others, a hospital official said. In the western town of Ramadi, a roadside bomb killed five American soldiers. The car bombs occurred just before sunset, around 6:45pm, hitting a bank, a vegetable market and another location in downtown Balad, a mostly Shiite city 50 miles north of the capital, witnesses said. Dr Khaled al-Azawi of Balad Hospital said at least 60 people were killed, and 70 were wounded, including the town's police chief, Col. Kadhim Abdul Razzaq, and four other policemen. AFP, however, said 37 people were killed and 50 wounded yesterday when three car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in the Shiite central town of Balad. Quoting an interior ministry official, the news agency said a fourth car bomb exploded an hour later in northern Baghdad as an Iraqi army convoy was passing by, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. In Balad, some 70 kilometres north of the capital, two pick-up trucks blew up in a central shopping street. A doctor at Baghdad's Khadimiyah hospital said 40 ambulances had been dispatched to Balad, but none had yet returned.
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