BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — At least four Iraqis died in attacks around the country on Sunday, including a man killed in a blast in Baghdad's Shiite slum district of Sadr City, Iraqi medical and security officials said.
"A bomb placed on the side of a road exploded near a marketplace in the middle of Sadr City as a mini-bus was passing, killing one person and wounding 19," said a security official, asking not to be named.
The attack took place at around 11 am (0800 GMT) and most of the casualties were on the bus.
The hospital in Sadr City, a district in northeast Baghdad that before the 2003 US-led invasion was known as Saddam City but has since been dominated by backers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, confirmed the casualty toll.
In northern Iraq's largest city of Mosul, an Iraqi soldier and a civilian were gunned down in front of their homes in two separate attacks, a police official said.
He said the soldier was killed in south Mosul while the other killing was carried out in a western district of the city, which the US army says is the last urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
It was unclear why the unidentified civilian was targeted in Mosul, which is rife with ethnic tensions between its Arab and Kurdish residents.
In Baquba, some 60 kilometres (less than 40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi released last week from the US detention centre of Camp Bucca in southern Iraq was gunned down at his home, a local security official said.
A police source said he was a former insurgent.
In southern Iraq, meanwhile, a US soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device on Sunday, the American military said. It was the first US reported combat death in Iraq since February 9.
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