At least 16 people have died in two separate bomb attacks in Baghdad this morning.
A suicide bomber drove his pickup truck into a crowded gas station north of Baghdad on Saturday and killed 12 people while a second car bomb targeting a convoy of foreigners killed four others in the capital, police said.
Twelve people were injured and nine cars were destroyed in the gas station bombing in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Lt. Col. Mahmoud Mohammed said.
In central Baghdad, a parked car bomb detonated when two armored cars carrying foreigners drove by, killing four Iraqi civilians, Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.
No one in the convoy was injured, but one of the armored cars was damaged and removed by US forces, Mahmoud said. The foreigners were not immediately identified, but none of them were injured, he added.
In northwestern Baghdad on Friday, 200 people carrying banners and chanting slogans gathered at a mosque to demand the resignation of the defense minister.
They were angered by the death of Khadim Sarhid al-Hemaiyem, a Sunni Arab sheik killed along with three of his sons and his son-in-law by gunmen who broke into his home on Wednesday.
Relatives said the men were wearing Iraqi army uniforms and that another of al-Hemaiyem's sons was killed by men in uniform last month.
A spokesman for the interior ministry denied that government forces were involved.
A statement from the little-known Partisans of the Sunni claimed it carried out a car bombing Thursday in the mostly Shiite city of Hillah in retaliation for the slaying of al-Hemaiyem and other attacks against Sunni Arabs. Eleven people were killed and 17 were wounded.