Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Suicide car bombers struck twice in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, killing at least five people and wounding 35 in attacks the U.S. military blamed on al-Qaeda.
The first bombing yesterday targeted an Iraqi patrol in the city, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, killing five local people and injuring 10, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement. The second struck 20 minutes later, wounding at least 25 people near the site of the first blast, it said.
Also yesterday, the Iraqi government pledged to protect Christians living in Mosul after 12 were killed in attacks blamed on Sunni militants in the past two weeks, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Mosul is a stronghold of al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq and is the focus of a campaign by U.S. forces and their Sunni tribesmen allies to clear militants from the north of the country. Attacks have continued in the city even as U.S. and Iraqi forces say they have routed al-Qaeda in other areas.
About 1,000 Iraqi police personnel have been deployed in Mosul after sectarian attacks forced hundreds of Christian families to flee, the BBC reported, citing the local governor.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who leads a Shiite- dominated government, said in a statement after talks with Christian Iraqi officials that his administration ``will take immediate action to resolve the problems and difficulties faced by Christians in Mosul,'' the BBC reported.
800,000 Christians
About a third of the estimated 800,000 Christians who lived in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have fled abroad, the report said.
Elsewhere, five Iraqis were killed and 12 wounded in a blast in southern Baghdad yesterday, the coalition said. It didn't provide further details of the attack.
The al-Qaeda in Iraq group carried out almost 300 bombings in 2007, killing more than 1,500 civilians and injuring more than twice that number, the U.S. military said in August. In the first half of 2008, 125 civilians were killed in 28 attacks, it said.
The drop in violence has been attributed to the U.S. troop buildup President George W. Bush ordered last year and the improved capability of the Iraqi security forces.
The U.S. has cut its presence to about 146,000 soldiers in Iraq from a peak of more than 160,000 late last year when reinforcements were sent to quell violence between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunnis.
While civilian deaths between June and August were down 77 percent on the same period the year before, Iraq faces unresolved issues that may trigger fresh violence, including the status of the oil city of Kirkuk and the integration of Sunni tribesmen into the security forces, the Pentagon said in a report last month.