Car bombers 
kill 15 in Baghdad area

Police said the attacks started when a parked car exploded in Mahmoudiya, killing five people. The town is about 20 miles south of the Iraqi capital.

A suicide car bomb later struck near a security checkpoint in the Baghdad suburb of Taji, killing six. Another explosion in the Shula district killed four people.

A teacher who saw the Taji attack, Nasseer Rahman, 35, said he was sitting in a minibus waiting to pass the checkpoint when it happened about 100 yards away.

“The useless checkpoint was the reason for the high casualties because dozens of cars were backed up in long lines before the checkpoint that got hit,” he said. “As soon as the blast struck, we got off the minibus and ran to the site of the explosion. We saw several cars on fire and pools of blood, and everybody was screaming for help.”

The new violence comes amid rising ethnic and sectarian tension following the arrest last month of bodyguards assigned to the Sunni Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi.

Rallies have swept the Sunni-dominated Anbar province and other parts of the country where Iraq’s minority Sunnis live to protest at alleged discrimination by the Shiite-led government.