A suicide car bomber killed 14 people and wounded 43 outside the Interior Ministry in downtown Baghdad Monday, police said, a day after an upsurge of violence left more than 50 people dead across the country. In one of the deadliest weekends for the U.S. military in recent months, the U.S. military said seven U.S. soldiers died between Saturday and Sunday night. The renewed violence undercut Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's claim that government forces were prevailing over insurgents and sectarian extremists. Despite the deaths, British Defense Minister Des Browne, visiting Baghdad on Monday, said the situation was improving. «Each time I come, I see more progress,» Browne said after meeting with Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji. Some 10,000 Iraqis have been killed in the last four months alone in unrelenting attacks by Sunni and Shiite extremists on each other's communities, as well as bombings and shootings by Sunni Arab insurgents, according to a report of the Associated Press.
