Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — A car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial district in a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 32 people and wounding 43, Iraqi officials said. The explosion in Dujail was apparently targeting a police station but instead it badly damaged a nearby medical clinic, according to police. Concrete barriers largely protected the police station, the officials said. Friday's blast was the latest in a series of attacks in areas north of Baghdad, where violence has been slower to decline than elsewhere in the country. Earlier Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a Shiite mosque farther north in Sinjar as worshippers left prayers at midday, killing two civilians and wounding 15.

In political developments, Shiite followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad and the southern city of Kufa against plans for a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that will determine the status of the U.S. military in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Mohammadawi, an al-Sadr aide, told worshippers during prayers that it is a "suspicious agreement" that would bring "humiliation and degradation to the Iraqi people."

Iraqi and U.N. officials say four cholera cases have been confirmed in Karbala, a holy Shiite city south of Baghdad that draws masses of pilgrims. The new cases come in addition to 36 previously announced by the Iraqi Health Ministry, and show that the latest outbreak of the gastrointestinal disease has spread to a new area. Naeema al-Gasseer, a doctor with the World Health Organization, confirms that figure and says the U.N. group is working with Iraqi authorities to contain the spread of the waterborne disease. Five people have died from it since Iraq's latest outbreak began last week.