5 Held in Baghdad Bombing That Killed 17

Iraqi security forces have captured four Palestinians and an Iraqi believed to have been responsible for a Baghdad market bombing that killed at least 17 people, a police commander said Friday.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Mohsen, the commander of an Interior Ministry security force, told state-run Al Iraqiya television that the men were captured hours after the attack Thursday in the Jadida neighborhood of east Baghdad.

Eighty-one people were wounded in the blast, including women and children.

Mohsen said the Shiite Muslim Badr Brigade militia, the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, helped his commandos capture the men. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a SCIRI member.

Mohsen said the captured men had provided useful information, but he declined to name them or say where they were found.

On Friday, an American soldier was killed and four were wounded when a car bomb exploded in Baiji, north of Baghdad, the military said.

In Baqubah, also north of the capital, a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol moved through town, killing three people and wounding six, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said. The dead were two soldiers and a civilian.

In Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, mortar rounds slammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing three soldiers and wounding three, police said.

In response to the ongoing violence, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari extended the country’s 6-month-old state of emergency by 30 days. The decision allows the government to impose curfews, close borders and airports and detain suspects without following normal legal procedures.

The extension does not apply to the relatively stable Kurdish region of northern Iraq.