Ten killed in rocket and bomb attack in Baghdad

BAGHDAD: At least 10 people were killed and 56 wounded when a rocket attack demolished a building and a car bomb hit rescuers rushing to the scene in Baghdad on Sunday, an interior ministry official said.   

The twin explosions knocked down a four-storey building in the Zafaraniyah district of the Iraqi capital, the official and a witness said.       

"A Katyusha rocket landed on a building in the Al-Qubyasi market. Five minutes later, 100 metres (yard) away from this building a car bomb went off," said the official after the blasts, which erupted at about 7:00 pm (1500 GMT).       

A medical official who lives in the district and who saw the attacks said: "There are dozens of bodies in the street. The building just collapsed. It was four-storeys, with homes and shops."          

"Civil defence personnel are trying to get bodies out of the building. The shops underneath are destroyed," he said.           

A female child was among the dead, a medic at the Ibn Nafis hospital said.          

A third blast, apparently a roadside bomb, targeted a police patrol heading for the scene, the interior ministry official added. Three officers were wounded in this apparent follow-up attack, he said.   

Baghdad is in the grip of a dirty war between rival sectarian gangs and insurgents targeting US-led coalition forces and the national unity government led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.