Bomb kills 18 at forensics centre in Baghdad

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Jim Muir says the attacks come against a backdrop of improved security.

A suicide car bomber has killed at least 18 people and injured 80 at a government forensics centre in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, police say, reports BBC.
The attacker apparently tried to drive through a police checkpoint and blast walls protecting the centre in the Kerrada district.
The building was badly damaged by the massive blast and the rubble was being searched by rescue teams. On Monday, bomb attacks near well-known hotels in the city killed 36 people.
"The building collapsed soon after the explosion," an interior ministry official told AFP news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Dozens of people usually work in the institute."
The Associated Press news agency reports that rescue teams in blue jumpsuits were combing through the debris of the three-storey building as a crane removed some of the fallen blast walls.
An Iraqi military spokesman, Maj Gen Qassim Atta, said the forensics centre had been the target of two bomb attacks in the past.
"At 1045 a suicide bomber raced his vehicle towards the institute" and blew it up, Gen Atta said.
This is the latest in a series of attacks on official buildings including those to do with crime and punishment, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Baghdad.
The justice ministry was badly damaged in October by a huge truck bomb and a court complex was hit in December.