A car bombing on Wednesday morning killed 13 people and wounded scores of others in southern Iraq as the blast went off outside a restaurant where local police were having breakfast, officials said.
It was not immediately clear how many police were among the dead.
The blast, shortly before 8 a.m., also wounded 41 people, said Dr. Zuhair al-Khafaji of the Hillah hospital, where the wounded and dead were taken. The explosion happened just south of Hillah, in the town of al-Shumali, about 90 kilometres south of Baghdad.
A police official at the scene put the death toll at 11 and confirmed 41 were wounded. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb targeting a security patrol in western Iraq killed two soldiers and wounded nine others, two officials said. That blast took place near the town of Habbaniyah, 80 kilometres west of Baghdad.
