Iraq: Car bomb followed by suicide bombing kill 14

Iraqi security forces inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, March 7, 2012. Iraqi officials say a car bomb has killed and wounded several people in a commercial area full of shops and clinics in western Baghdad. (AP Photo)

BAGHDAD (AP) — Two bombs that exploded in swift succession killed 14 people Wednesday near a crowded restaurant in a mid-sized city in Iraq's north, officials said.

Officials said the blasts may indicate that the town of Tal Afar, a hotbed of insurgency during the years that Iraq teetered on the edge of civil war, may again be experiencing an influx of militants due to the uprising in neighboring Syria.

Foreign volunteers coming to join the Iraqi insurgency once passed through the town en route from Syria to the northern Iraqi crossroads city of Mosul. Now, Iraqi fighters are thought to be heading in the other direction, traveling to aid Syria's largely Sunni insurgents in their battle against a regime in Damascus dominated by a Shiite offshoot sect.

Tal Afar Mayor Abdul Aal Abbas al-Obedi said a car parked outside a popular downtown restaurant exploded in the early afternoon. As people rushed to the scene to help, a suicide bomber in the crowd detonated his explosives belt, al-Obedi said.

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