About 40 people have been killed and more than 80 wounded in a string of bomb and mortar attacks across Iraq, most of them in Baghdad. The violence on Saturday, which included at least four car bombs in or near Baghdad, occurred despite a security crackdown in the Iraqi capital.In the deadliest attack, a car bomb struck an Iraqi police checkpoint in al-Maalef district, a Shia area southwest of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding 38, police said. Another car bomb targeting the Iraqi army and police killed 11 people. Fifteen others were wounded when a bomber blew himself up at a joint Iraqi army and police checkpoint in Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood, an interior ministry official said.
Meanwhile, Aljazeera reported quoting a hospital source in Falluja in western Iraq that eight Iraqis, among them women and children belonging to one family, were killed and six others wounded on Friday night in an air strike by US warplanes. The bombing targeted a house in Ibrahim Bin Ali district in north-eastern Falluja.