BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb killed four people and wounded 45 on Wednesday at a crowded market in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, mainly populated by the minority Yazidi sect, police said.
Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq over the past year but bombings, roadside explosions, assassinations and other violent incidents are still routine.
Police said the death toll in Sinjar -- lying west of the volatile city of Mosul some 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, where al Qaeda and other militant groups still stage frequent attacks -- could well rise.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed a teenage boy and wounded 17 people at a demonstration in Mosul against Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
Like other religious minorities, the Yazidis, a pre-Islamic religious sect dotted around northern Iraq and Syria, have been frequently targeted by Iraqi militants.
Gunmen killed seven Yazidis from a single family in Mosul earlier this month. Last year, suicide truck bombers killed hundreds of people in Yazidi villages north of Mosul in one of the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq's history.
(Reporting by Aseel Kami; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Katie Nguyen)
