BAGHDAD: A woman suicide bomber blew herself up near an entrance to the US-protected Green Zone and a bomb tore through a minibus carrying Iraqi government employees in separate attacks yesterday that killed at least 20 people, Iraqi officials said.
Three more people were killed in bomb attacks on police patrols in Baghdad and Baqouba, northeast of the capital, police said.
The violence came as Iraqi lawmakers prepared for a vote tomorrow on a security pact with the United States that would enable American forces to stay in Iraq for up to three more years under strict Iraqi oversight.
In the first attack, a bomb attached to a bus used by the Trade Ministry to ferry employees to work exploded shortly before 8 a.m. in eastern Baghdad, police and hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
13 ministry employees were killed and three were wounded, according to an official with the state-owned Iraqi shopping centers company who also spoke on condition of anonymity. The company is part of the Trade Ministry.
The rush-hour attack occurred in a Shiite area and the injured were taken to Kindi and Ibn Al-Nafis hospitals in Baghdad.
An official at Kindi hospital’s emergency wing and another official at Ibn Al-Nafis said eight women were among the 13 people killed. Most of the bodies were severely burned, making identification difficult.
The US military said 14 people were killed and four were injured in the 7:20 a.m. bombing of the minibus. It said American soldiers assisted Iraqi police in securing the area and treating casualties.
About 45 minutes later, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up as she stood in line to be searched at a checkpoint near the Green Zone in central Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 13, according to an Interior Ministry official who declined to give his name.
Iraq’s intelligence service said the bomber had targeted the checkpoint where its workers enter the Green Zone to go to work at the agency’s headquarters, which is inside the fortified area. The service said women employees, including a pregnant woman, were killed and some of its guards were injured.
Kindi hospital said two women were among those killed in the blast.
The US military said the bombing near the Green Zone occurred between 8.30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and killed two Iraqi army members and three civilians. One civilian was injured, it said.
