Car bombings kill 12 in Iraq

At least 12 people were killed and 55 others wounded in two car bomb attacks in Iraq on Thursday evening, police and medical sources said. A car bomb went off in the capital Baghdad's eastern district of Alamein on Thursday evening, killing seven people and wounding 39 others, an Interior Ministry source said. Five people were killed and 16 others injured in another car bomb attack near a hospital in Sadr City, a Shiite district of northeastern Baghdad, the source said. Earlier on Thursday, 25 people were killed and 31 others wounded in separate violent attacks in the country, according to police and medical sources. The violence came just 20 days before Iraq's landmark parliamentary elections on April 30, which is the first in the country since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in late 2011.