Blast hits near hospital as violence tears across Iraq

Story Highlights

• Car bombs across Iraq kill 11; gunfire kills more
• Government counts 1,800 civilians killed during March
• Death toll in Tal Afar market bombing sharply raised
• Iraqi justice minister resigns from al-Maliki government

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Car bombs and gunfire killed more than two dozen civilians and wounded more than 60 in attacks throughout Iraq on Saturday, officials said.

The attacks came as the Interior Ministry said that more than 1,800 Iraqi civilians died in sectarian and insurgent violence in Iraq in March. There were 226 more civilian deaths in March than in February, the data show.

On Saturday, five civilians were killed and 22 wounded in a car-bomb explosion near Sadrayn Hospital in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood at 10 a.m., a Baghdad police official said.

South of Baghdad in Hilla, four people were killed and 20 were wounded when a car bomb exploded near people lining up at a gas station, Babil police said.

A car bomb killed two day laborers and wounded 11 others who were gathered north of the capital in the Salaheddin province city of Tuz Khurmatu on Saturday morning, a Tikrit police official said.

Eight people were killed and one wounded about 1:30 p.m. Saturday when gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying workers on a road near Hawija, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of Tikrit. The workers were employed at a U.S. military base near Hawija, an Interior Ministry official said.

Three people were killed and five wounded in a roadside bombing about noon at a shopping area in Suwayrah, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Baghdad, according to an Interior Ministry official. Police also found five other bodies in Suwayrah.

Six people were hurt when a bomb in a parked car exploded in Mosul.

In Baghdad, an employee of Iraqiya state television was gunned down Saturday while driving his car. Another person died and one was wounded when gunmen opened fire on people standing outside a house in southwestern Baghdad's Amil neighborhood. Thirteen bullet-riddled bodies were found across the capital.

Two people -- a contractor working at a U.S. base and his son -- were killed when gunmen stormed a shop in Diwaniyah about noon Saturday.

Injury total steady

The number of Iraqis wounded in March was similar to the total for February --2,708 in March, compared with 2,702 the month before.

In January, 1,990 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence across the country, and 1,936 were injured.

An Iraq-U.S. security plan was recently set in motion to curb violence in Baghdad.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Friday that sectarian violence had dropped in the first six weeks of the plan compared to the six weeks before it started.

The Interior Ministry on Saturday nearly doubled, to 152, the death toll from a suicide truck bombing last week at a Tal Afar market, The Associated Press reported.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said the figure escalated after more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the bombing, AP reported.

If the new figure is accurate, the bombing would be the worst single attack on civilians since the war began in March 2003.

However, U.S. officials and the city's mayor held to the original death toll of 83, though they acknowledged it could change, AP reported.

U.S. military denies it carried out airstrikes

The U.S. military said coalition forces captured 16 suspected terrorists during operations Friday evening and Saturday. The operations took place in Arab Jabour, Mosul and Falluja.

Meanwhile, the United States denied that its forces were involved in airstrikes on Sadr City on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

Local officials said 20 suspected militants were killed and 14 wounded, along with seven civilians, when aircraft struck a Shiite militant base in eastern Baghdad, AP reported.

Iraqi Cabinet member resigns

Iraq's justice minister resigned from his position this week -- the first Cabinet minister to quit since Nuri al-Maliki's government formed nearly a year ago, a political official confirmed to CNN on Saturday.

Justice Minister Hashem al-Shebly offered his resignation three days ago and al-Maliki accepted it, said Izzat al-Shahbandar, a spokesman of the Iraqi National List.

"Al-Shebly did not feel there was any harmony in government policy, and he did not want to continue. And for this reason he decided to resign," al-Shahbandar said.

Al-Shebly belongs to the Iraqi National List, a secular bloc headed by former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The bloc has put forward three candidates to replace him. It has 25 seats in Iraq's Council of Representatives.

CNN's Basim Mahdi and Mohammed Tawfeeq and The Associated Press contributed to this report.