Death Toll In Iraq Suicide Blast Climbs To 17

The site of today's suicide car bomb attack in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- A suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded 80 others near an Iraqi Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad today, ministry officials said.

Many of those injured or killed in the vehicle-borne explosion at a ministry forensics office in Baghdad's Karrada neighbourhood were police, the ministry official said.

The attack came a day after a trio of suicide attacks on well-known Baghdad hotels, two of them hubs for western visitors and journalists, killed at least 36 people.