BAGHDAD - At least two Iraqis, including a child, were killed and 16 people injured in three car bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday, officials said.
The bombings brought to five the number of attacks in the capital in the space of 24 hours, piling the pressure on Iraq's new leaders who are still struggling to form a new government 11 weeks after the landmark elections.
In the first attack against a US military convoy in the western Amiriyah district, at least two Iraqi civilians were killed and four wounded, the interior ministry and hospital officials said.
"One of the two dead was a child," said an interior ministry source, without specifying if US troops figured among the casualties.
The attack was claimed on an Islamist website by the Islamic Army in Iraq, a group notorious for kidnapping foreigners and in some cases killing them.
"A squadron of the Islamic Army in Iraq attacked two civilian cars... transporting important American figures in the Amiriyah region on the road to Baghdad airport, killing all occupants," it said in the statement, which could not be verified.
Less than 90 minutes after the first attack, eight people were injured in a second car bomb attack near a police station in the southern district of Dura, the interior ministry official said.
In the third incident, at least three civilians were hurt when another car bomb exploded in Dura as an Iraqi police patrol drove by, the interior ministry official said.
The attacks followed two suicide car bombs on Tuesday as insurgents stepped up attacks against Iraqi security forces.
In the biggest attack, a suicide car bomber killed at least six people Tuesday outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad.
The US military also said that two US soldiers had been killed in a car bombing in the south of the capital on Tuesday that interior ministry officials said had injured seven Iraqis.
04/20/2005 12:46 GMT