7 Killed in Baghdad Suicide Bombing

A suicide bomber driving a minivan with passengers aboard blew himself up near a bus depot in the center of the Iraqi capital Friday, killing seven people and wounding 20, police said.

The wreckage of the van smoldered in the hot sun while Iraqi police hurried stunned onlookers away from the scene of the blast in Tayaran Square. The square, a main bus portal for travel within Baghdad, was crowded with people enjoying the Friday holiday. Blood pooled in the streets around the station, a simple, open-air transit point surrounded by a brick wall.

As insurgents in recent months have stepped up attacks against large crowds of Iraqis gathered in public places, bus stations and markets have been frequent targets. In August, a series of car bombings at Baghdad’s main bus station and the nearby hospital killed more than 40 people.

Three American troops also died Friday, the U.S. military said in statements. Two were killed by roadside bombs, one near Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and the other in southeast Baghdad, the statements said. The third was killed by small-arms fire in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the capital.

Meanwhile, in Mosul, about 225 miles north of Baghdad, police discovered 10 bodies Thursday night. Three of the dead were identified as members of an ethnically based political party, the Turkmen Front, said Bahaa Aldin Bakri, a physician at Jumhouri Hospital.

The three Turkmen Front members were shot by armed men driving in a red Opel sedan in the Baladiyat neighborhood of eastern Mosul, Bakri said.

In Baghdad on Thursday night, a member of the committee that vets government employees for ties to Saddam Hussein’s now-outlawed Baath Party was assassinated, said Ali Lami, a senior member of the committee. Ali Abdul Ridha, a manager with the committee, was driving with his family in the Nafaq al Shurta area of the city when he was assassinated by unknown armed men who pulled up alongside his vehicle.

Lami said another member of the committee who had been kidnapped was rescued by Iraqi security forces in the Ghazaliya neighborhood of western Baghdad, a stronghold for insurgents operating in the capital. An Australian hostage, Douglas Wood, was rescued there last June after being held for 47 days.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned that violence is likely to increase leading up to the Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution, which will provide the framework for a new government.

On Thursday, Iraq’s most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, announced his support for the constitution through an aide in the holy city of Najaf.

The Shiite Muslim leader’s endorsement is essential to the success of the referendum, which some Sunni Muslims have vowed to try to defeat.But at the Sunni Umm Qura Mosque in Baghdad on Friday, Sheik Mahmoud Sumaidaie condemned the constitution, which he labeled the “American project” and called for its defeat.

“Our constitution is the Koran,” Sumaidaie said.