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Car bombings kill at least 17 in Baghdad

Onslaught follows deadly blasts that already rocked Iraqi capital

An injured man sits amid rubble left by a car bomb Thursday in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four car bombs exploded Thursday in a north-central neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding as many as 60 others, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.

A suicide attack near an old mall in the Karada area killed seven civilians and wounded 10 others, the defense ministry said, while the Iraqi police put the death toll at 12 civilians and three police officers, with 50 wounded.

Three police officers and seven civilians died in a second suicide blast targeting an Iraqi police patrol near a gas station, the ministry said. Ten civilians were wounded.

Car bombs also went off near two Shiite Muslim mosques -- Albu Jumaa and Abdul Rasool Ali. The bomb near Albu Jumaa mosque was parked on the street and likely was remotely detonated.

A team of explosives experts defused a fifth bomb near the Mubarak mosque.

The violence followed five car bombings Wednesday night in the capital, including three nearly simultaneous blasts that killed 18 people in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, police said. (Full story)

The first of those bombs exploded outside an office operated by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose Mehdi Army militia battled U.S.-led coalition forces for months last year.

Since then, Al-Sadr has joined other Shiite and Sunni representatives seeking an end to sectarian violence.

Two other bombs went off in the Shu'la neighborhood, a focal point of tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad. Eighteen people were killed, and 46 others wounded.

All three remote-controlled blasts took place within a 10-minute span around 9 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) and within a half-mile of each another, police said.

The bombs apparently were intended for civilians since no Iraqi police or security forces were present, police said.

Elsewhere Wednesday, a suicide car bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy on the main highway to Baghdad International Airport, police said. No casualties were reported. The military had no comment.

Another bomb detonated near an Iraqi government convoy of two cars in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Jadeeda, wounding three civilians. No one was wounded in the cars, police said.

Hostage freed

Robert Tarongoy, a Filipino taken hostage almost eight months ago in Iraq, has been freed, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Wednesday.

In a phone interview with a Philippine television station, an emotional Tarongoy thanked Arroyo, The Associated Press reported. "She did not neglect me," he told the AP, also thanking diplomats who helped win his freedom.

Asked how he was treated by his captors, Tarongoy said, his voice cracking: "You know how long I was kept there. It was difficult," the AP reported.

Arroyo issued a statement saying, "Robert is now safe in the hands of the Iraq hostage crisis team led by [Foreign] Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, who is making the necessary arrangements to bring him back to the Philippines."

Tarongoy was abducted November 1 from a villa in Baghdad owned by a Saudi company that employed him as an accountant. (Full story)

The AP reported Seguis as telling television station GMA no ransom was paid and that several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan -- along with Muslim clerics -- helped secure Tarongoy's release.

Other developments

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that it "would be a terrible mistake" to set deadlines for the coalition to leave Iraq, according to prepared remarks. Political pressure has been mounting for the Bush administration to set a timetable for the return of U.S. troops. (Full story)

One of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted terrorists was killed recently in fighting with U.S. troops in Iraq near the Syrian border, according to an Islamist Web site. A statement on the site, signed by al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said that Abdullah al-Rashoud was "martyred" near Qaim. U.S. Marine intelligence officer Capt. Thomas Sibley said it's "possible that this individual was killed either during the fighting in Operation Spear or during pre-operation airstrikes." Spear was the second of two recent operations aimed at disrupting the cross-border infiltration by foreign fighters. (Full story)

The lawyer for former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Thursday his imprisoned client told him he will not testify in court against Saddam Hussein and that he wants a trial on "independent soil." Attorney Badi Aref Izzat said Aziz describes himself as being "in good health," but said he misses his family, whom he has not seen since his surrender after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. (Full story)

A new classified report by the Central Intelligence Agency said Iraq could be an even more effective training ground for Islamic terrorists than Afghanistan was under the Taliban, U.S. officials said. The report said would-be terrorists are flocking to Iraq and gaining practical experience in urban combat techniques they may take back and use in their home countries.

CNN's Jane Arraf, David Ensor, Caroline Faraj and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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