Police: Suicide attack kills 15 in Iraq By Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN June 4, 2012 -- Updated 1040 GMT (1840 HKT) The attack target the offices of Shia religious affairs On Thursday, an attack on a Shia neighborhood killed 11 people (CNN) -- A suicide bomber detonated his car next to a government building in Baghdad on Monday, killing 15 people and wounding 65 others, police said. The attack targeted the offices of Shiite religious affairs in the Bab al-Mouadham district in north-central Baghdad. On Thursday, a series of explosions in a three-hour period shook several areas in Baghdad, leaving at least 14 people dead and dozens injured, Iraqi police said. It was unclear who committed the attacks and whether they were linked. One of the explosions Thursday took place in Sulaa, a Shiite neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad. A parked car bomb exploded outside a gas station in a busy area, killing at least 11 people and wounding 36 others, police said. Sectarian tensions in Iraq flared following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime. Hussein was later executed after being found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killings of Shiite villagers in 1982, a reported retaliation for an assassination attempt on his life. The sectarian violence that followed the invasion between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni minority nearly ripped the country apart. While violence has dropped off, there are still near daily attacks. Nearly 4,500 Americans and 300-plus allied troops were killed before the last American troops left in December, while estimates of the Iraqi toll run well above 100,000. Tensions between Sunnis and Shiites flared this year, raising fears of a possible return to violence, after the Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government charged its Sunni vice president on charges he used his security detail as a death squad. Tariq al-Hashimi has denied the allegations.