Dozens were killed and injured as bombings and clashes targeted areas across Iraq on Tuesday.

Dozens were killed and injured as bombings and clashes targeted areas across Iraq on Tuesday.

An interior ministry official said two car bombings in Baghdad's central Karrada area, one of them a suicide attack, killed 12 people, among them seven police, and wounded 47, among them 10 police.
A medical official put the toll at 19 killed, including five police, and 50 wounded, among them 10 police.

The interior ministry official also reported another suicide bombing as well as armed clashes.
A health ministry official at the scene of that attack, which was also in central Baghdad, said he saw the bodies of seven interior ministry special forces personnel and two civilians.

The interior ministry meanwhile said in a statement on its website referring to one of the Baghdad attacks that its "forces thwarted a terrorist attack targeting the anti-terrorism directorate," which was aimed at freeing detainees.

Three attackers entered the directorate after setting off a bomb followed by a car bomb at the gate, but guards killed two of them and no detainees were freed, it said, adding that a lieutenant colonel was killed and two guards wounded.
Official tolls in Iraq are often much lower than those given by other sources.

Separately, two people were killed and three wounded by a car bomb north of Fallujah, a police major in the western province of Anabar and Doctor Assem al-Hamdani of Fallujah Hospital said.