Car bombs in central Baghdad kill nine

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Suicide bombers detonated two explosives-packed cars today outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, killing at least nine people and wounding 23, officials said.

Baghdad military spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi said the bombers appeared to be targeting the motorcades of two senior government officials one from the military, the other from the Cabinet who were headed to work. He declined to elaborate.

The cars blew up shortly after 8 am, in a line of vehicles that were waiting to be cleared into the Green Zone, which houses Iraq's parliament and ministry offices, as well as several foreign embassies.

Two police officers and an official at al-Yarmouk hospital said nine people, including five Iraqi soldiers, were killed and 23 people were wounded in the attack. Al-Moussawi put the number of dead at six, with 14 wounded, but added that 'this is not a final death toll'.

Conflicting casualty numbers are common in the immediate aftermath of attacks.

The vehicles blew up about 400 metres (yards) from the security checkpoint on a western road between the Green Zone and Baghdad's international airport. The explosion set ablaze some of the cars that were waiting to enter the Green Zone, al-Moussawi said.

A few miles (kilometres) away, two more roadside bombs exploded a few minutes later in what appeared to be an unrelated strike.

Police said nine passers-by were wounded in the attack outside a restaurant in Jadriyah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood on the southeastern side of the Tigris River.

Violence has ebbed across Iraq since the days of sectarian fighting just a few years ago that brought the country to the brink of civil war.

But deadly bombings and shootings still occur on a near daily basis as insurgents seek to highlight Iraq's continued instability as US troops prepare to withdraw by the end of the year.