Three killed, 40 injured in blast in northern Iraq

(dpa) - At least three people were killed and 40 injured Tuesday in a car bomb blast in a shopping area in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

The car bomb was detonated by remote control in the commercial Khalid Ibn al-Walid street in central Mosul, unnamed police sources told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

Three policemen were among the wounded.

Separately, six people were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in a suicide bombing in Iraq's holy city of Karbala.

A female suicide bomber blew herself up Monday evening near a Shiite holy shrine in Karbala, killing at least 49 people and injuring 70, some of them Iranian worshippers, police and witnesses said.

The attack, the deadliest in the city in nearly a year, was condemned by the office of radical Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, situated only 30 metres away from the scene of the blast, VOI reported.

The office accused Sunni extremists of targeting the "unity of Muslims."

The blast occurred near the shrine of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, a fortified, car-free area.

In another incident of violence on Monday evening, six children were killed when a mortar shell that fell on their home exploded in the Sumar district of north-eastern Baghdad, a security source told VOI.

The district has often been targeted by mortar shells, which cause civilian casualties.

Two US soldiers were also killed Monday by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

The fatalities brought the death toll of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion to 3,990