Thirteen people have been killed and eight wounded in a car bomb attack on a market located in a Shia-dominated Baghdad neighbhourhood, an Interior Ministry official said. The blast occured at 7:45pm (1545 GMT) on Thursday on the outskirts of Baghdad's western Kadhimiyah neighbhourhood, the official said.Iraq's Shia community has been hit by a surge of attacks in recent weeks in what US officials say is a campaign by the al Qaeda leader in Iraq to draw them into a sectarian civil war. Last week, a triple suicide bombing at a Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad killed up to 90 people.
In a separate attack on Thursday, armed men killed the brother of a top Sunni Arab politician in Baghdad on Thursday, members of his Iraqi Islamic Party said. Mahmoud al-Hashimi, brother of Iraqi Islamic Party leader Tariq al-Hashimi, died on Thursday, according to senior party official Ayad al-Samarei. He refused to give further details. Al-Hashimi is being tipped as the speaker of the new parliament, which is scheduled to meet on Monday. The Islamic Party is one the country's main Sunni political organisations.