I believe there’s 4 more American troops killed today, too.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A car bomb exploded Tuesday near a park popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a center of the Sunni insurgency, police said. The attack occurred just three days after more than 50 people were killed outside a mosque in a nearby village where the imam had spoken out against the group al-Qaida in Iraq - pointing to an increasingly bloody attempts to silence its opponents. But the deaths of the boys, aged 10 to 15, left authorities grasping for a possible motive.

The bomb-rigged car blew apart late Tuesday afternoon while the boys were playing in central Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. Both local police and state television said 18 boys died.

The Interior Ministry did not immediately return calls for further details of the attack. U.S. Marines are stationed near Ramadi.

It was not immediately known if the children were the intended targets, but young people are often caught in Iraq’s daily bloodshed. On Sunday, more than 40 people, mostly college students, were killed in a bombing outside a mostly Shiite college in Baghdad.

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