More than 50 Iraqis have been killed in attacks, including 30 in a car bomb attack on a hospital, as violence escalates in the run-up to the 15 December general elections.
The bloodiest attack took place on Thursday in Mahmudiyah, some 20km south of the capital, where a man attempted to ram a booby-trapped car into a hospital compound.
Thirty people died and 27 were wounded, including four US soldiers, security sources said. "I was leaving the hospital with my one-and-a-half-year-old son in my arms when the explosion happened," Hoda Ali, 30, wounded on her face and arms, told AFP. "I was knocked down by the force of the blast and when I came to, my son was no longer in my arms. I found him among the dead." US casualties. The US military reported the deaths of two servicemen in a roadside bombing on Thursday southwest of Baghdad, while four American soldiers were killed in a series of incidents
