Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber has killed at least 26 people and wounded about 70 others in the southern town of Hillah.
Authorities say the blast Tuesday went off near a hospital in a commercial district. Many of the dead are said to be women and children. Hillah is 100 kilometers south of Baghdad.
In other news, the U.S. military said coalition forces detained 20 suspected terrorists Tuesday in raids targeting al-Qaida in Iraq operations north of Baghdad.
The military said one of those detained is a foreign terrorist suspected of involvement in a suicide truck bomb attack in May in the town of Samarra. The statement did not say where the suspect is from.