37 killed in Iraq attacks (Night Lead)

BAGHDAD - A series of bomb attacks across Iraq Sunday killed 37 people and injured dozens more, less than a month after the US declared a military drawdown of its troop levels.

The largest single attack of the day was a car bombing that killed at least 19 people in Baghdad’s al-Mansour neighbourhood, in the southwest of the capital.

Iraqi military sources said that 58 people were injured in that attack, which took place in a crowded area near an outlet for one of Iraq’s biggest privately owned mobile phone providers, AciaCell.

On Aden Square in the north of Baghdad, two car bombs killed 12 people and injured 36 within minutes of the day’s first blast.

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer was also seriously injured when an explosive device planted in his car went off in the Salhiya district in central Baghdad.

In central Faluja, some 60 km west of Baghdad, six people, including three Iraqi soldiers, were killed in a suicide attack, a source at the Faluja police said.

The suicide bomber detonated a car bomb as the army patrol was driving by. That attack left 11 people injured.

Sunday’s blasts come less than a month after a series of blasts across Iraq killed some 64 people and injured 190 in late August.

The attacks came within weeks of US President Barack Obama’s decision to bring US troop numbers down to around 50,000, some three years after they peaked at around 168,000.