BAGHDAD - In the deadliest attack in nearly two weeks at least 28 people were killed and around 50 injured Friday in a car bomb blast in Zafraniyah district of east Baghdad near a funeral procession outside a hospital.
The blast, before noon, in Zafraniyah was caused by a suicide attacker driving an explosives-packed car, an interior ministry official said. .
Friday's attack came a day after violence in Iraq killed 17 people, and is the deadliest to hit the country in nearly two weeks.
Over 200 people have been killed in attacks since American forces completed their pullout on December 18, according to an AFP tally.
The car explosion Friday hit the funeral procession of Mohammed al-Maliki, a real estate agent who was killed along with his wife and son on Thursday in the west Baghdad neighbourhood of Yarmuk, the doctor and interior ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
The procession had collected Maliki's body and was transporting it for the funeral when the explosion struck.
At least four women were among the fatalities, hospital sources said.
Maliki and his family were killed by gunmen who burst into a real estate agency in Yarmuk and killed three. An interior ministry official however later claimed four people, including two real estate agents, died when gunmen opened fire on their car.
Deadly attack on real estate agencies was one of many reported Thursday with total death toll around 17.
Iraqi authorities blame Sunni Islamist insurgents for attacks targetting Shi'ites in an attempt to stir up the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006-07, taking toll of thousands of life.
Though the scale of violence is not as severe as in 2006-07, it has been continuing and has in fact escalated since the withdrawal of US military.
Political tensions have flared since authorities charged Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi with running a death squad and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, calling for the removal of his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak for describing the premier as being "worse than Saddam Hussein".
In response, Hashemi and Mutlak's Iraqiya bloc has largely boycotted the cabinet and parliament, and Hashemi, who denies the charges, has stayed in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which has so far declined to hand him over.
Urgings of the United Nations and the United States for dialogue among Iraq's political leaders are yet to yield results.
