Car bomb in Baghdad kills 6; Iraq asks Turkey not to attack

A car bomb exploded Tuesday near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 25, police and military officials said.\nIraq’s Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi arrived in Ankara to try to persuade Turkey not to stage a cross-border offensive to fight separatist Kurdish rebels based in the mountainous frontier region.\nThe Iraqi government also reiterated its call for Turkey to use diplomacy.\nAli al-Dabbagh, the spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the government would not tolerate violence from the separatist rebels, but he urged the Turks to “seek a diplomatic solution and not a military one in dealing with the terrorist threats that target it.”\nWashington has pressed its NATO ally not to enter Iraq, fearing that unilateral Turkish military action could destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, which is one of Iraq’s few relatively stable areas. \nThe Kurds also are a longtime U.S. ally.\nThe explosives-laden car was parked near a gas station across the street from a checkpoint when it blew up just before noon, police and army officials said.\nThe officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information, said four civilians and two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 25 people were wounded, including 19 civilians.\nNobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq.\nU.S. commanders have cited major progress in curtailing al-Qaida operations during an eight-month security crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding areas, but they have been unable to stop the car bombings and suicide attacks usually attributed to the group.\nA car bomb in western Baghdad’s religiously mixed Harthiyah neighborhood Monday night killed at least six people and wounded 25, \npolice said. \nMost of the victims were among families on their way home after spending the day in a nearby amusement park for Eid al-Fitr, the festival that follows the end of Ramadan.\nA suicide car bomber also targeted a Sunni Arab group that has joined forces with the U.S. against al-Qaida around Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. The blast tore through a checkpoint near the Salahuddin Revival Council’s office in Yathreb village, just outside Balad, killing six policemen and wounding eight people, including bystanders, police said.\nThe U.S. military announced the arrest of several militants on both sides of the sectarian divide, including one of five extremists who were believed to be behind last week’s rocket attack that killed two U.S. soldiers on Camp Victory, the headquarters for American forces in Iraq.\nThe suspect was detained along with three known associates early Monday by U.S. soldiers, according to a statement. \nThe alleged militants tried to hide in the Agriculture Ministry compound in eastern Baghdad and the soldiers entered the ministry to detain them, the military said.