The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Baghdad

At least 36 people were killed in two separate bomb blasts in Iraq today and yesterday.

Iraqi authorities say a bomb has killed four people and wounded nine others at a security checkpoint in eastern Baghdad. Police and medics say the dead include three Iraqi police commandos and a member of an armed Sunni group that has turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

The injured include seven Iraqi security personnel and two bystanders. The police and medics spoke about the attack Saturday on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

On Friday, a car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial district in Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad. Iraqi officials say at least 32 people died.

It was the second attack on Friday targeting the country's majority Shiite community after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in the northern town of Sinjar earlier in the day killing two worshippers.

The bomber struck in Dujail, in the Sunni province of Salaheddin north of Baghdad, at around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) just minutes before people were getting ready to break their daily fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Haider al-Dujaili, the head of the Dujail town council, told AFP that 36 people were slain in the bombing and another 30 wounded and were being treated in the Dujail hospital and in the nearby town of Balad.

But an interior ministry official in Baghdad and a police officer from Tikrit, capital of Salaheddin, put the wounded toll at 40.

The police officer said the police station, located in a crowded commercial area, was surrounded by tall concrete walls and that the bomber had been unable to break through into the interior.

But the impact of the explosion damaged the police station, he said, adding that although most of the casualties were civilians some of the victims were policemen.

Dujail, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Baghdad, was the site of an assassination attempt on executed dictator Saddam Hussein in 1982.

Saddam was executed in December 2006 after an Iraqi court found him guilty of ordering the killing of more than 140 Shiites suspected of planning his assassination in Dujail.

The attack on Friday was the biggest since the June 17 car bombing at a Baghdad bus stop which killed 51 people.

It came at a time when the violence in Iraq is at a four-year low.