STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Five are dead and 39 are wounded in a suicide bombing in Baghdad, police say
- Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met with senior security officials over the weekend
- A string of explosions killed dozens of people last week
Baghdad (CNN) -- A suicide car bomber struck a security checkpoint at the main entrance to Iraq's interior ministry compound in central Baghdad Monday, killing at least five people and wounding 39 others, police said.
The attack follows a weekend meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and senior security officials to review last week's deadly bombings that killed almost 70 people and wounded more than 200. The string of 20 explosions came just days after the final U.S. troops withdrew.
Al-Maliki said at that session that security and stability must be the country's top priorities.
The seemingly coordinated explosions Thursday struck during the height of morning rush hour, hitting a number of Baghdad's primarily mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nine car bombs, six roadside bombs and a mortar round all went off in a two-hour period, targeting residential, commercial and government districts in the Iraqi capital, two police officials told CNN.
While violence in Iraq has fallen off in recent years, the latest attacks are among the worst since August when a series of coordinated bombings killed at least 75 people in 17 Iraqi cities.
The attacks came amid heightened sectarian tensions, raising fears that the political turmoil in Iraq could spark a return of sectarian bloodshed that nearly ripped the country apart during the height of the war.
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