More deadly attacks in Baghdad

At least one person has been killed and eight injured in a car bomb attack near the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. The blast was only 50 metres from the Iranian embassy, although the authorities did not initially believe that the building was the intended target. The Green Zone also houses the US and British embassies and key offices of the Iraqi government. Soon after the attack, two rockets hit a Shia enclave in southern Baghdad, injuring a number of people. There were conflicting reports about the number of casualties with some police sources saying at least 10 people were killed and eight injured. The Reuters news agency, however, said other police sources reported that only three people had been wounded. The two Katyusha rockets slammed into the Abu Dishir district, which is surrounded by a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood.
Mosque targeted
It was not clear whether the Green Zone blast was intended as a signal to the Iranians.
The explosion ripped through the street at 08:45 am (0545 GMT) during the busiest period of the morning rush hour, when nearby roads were packed with motorists and pedestrians heading for work, many in nearby Iraqi ministries. Khalil Saadati, an Iranian diplomat, said: "It was close to the embassy, but we weren't the target." On Saturday, a fuel tanker rigged with explosives killed 40 people when it blew up near a Sunni mosque in western Iraq . The blast came a day after the mosque's imam had criticised al-Qaeda fighters, police and residents said.
The bomb exploded in a market in the town of Habaniya in the province of Anbar, where US forces are battling armed Sunni Arab groups. Local police said they believed the mosque was the target, adding that the market had been destroyed and 64 people wounded. Women and children were among the dead, they said.

THE SECOND BOMB COULD HAVE MADE MORE DAMAGE AND MAYHEM

2nd Bomb in 2 Days Explodes in IranSaturday, February 17, 2007, No one was injured in a bombing that took place near the site of an explosion that killed 11 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran this week, the country's state-run news agency said on Saturday.


The official Islamic Republic News Agency said police and insurgents briefly clashed after the explosion at a school in Zahedan late Friday. No one was in the school at the time of the blast."The explosion left no casualties or injuries and didn't cause damages," Hasan Ali Nouri, governor of Zahedan, was quoted as saying by IRNA.Nouri had previously told the semiofficial Fars news agency that the blast was a "sound bomb explosion" _ a device that creates a loud boom but that usually does not cause casualties.Friday's blast came just hours after the funeral for the 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards who were killed in Wednesday's bombing.A Sunni Muslim militant group called Jundallah, or God's Brigade, had claimed responsibility for the attack. The blasts are a sharp flare-up of violence but the remote southeastern corner of Iran, near Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long been plagued by lawlessness. The area is a key crossing point for opium from Afghanistan and often sees clashes between police and drug gangs.The anti Government activities are a new form of resistence which started last year. Jundallah, has waged a low-level insurgency in the area and is led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a member of Iran's ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that is Sunni Muslim and also can be found in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rigi has said his group is fighting for the rights of all the Iranian under the rile of the Shea Khamani and especially the impoverished Sunnis under Iran's Shiite government.