A series of explosions in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf killed at least one person and wounded 22, an Iraqi hospital official said.Casualty details were not immediately available from the city's other main hospital. A police source in Baghdad said the blasts, in the city centre less than a kilometre from the revered Imam Alis shrine, had killed at least 15 people and injured 25, but officials in Najaf were unable to confirm that. Najaf, in Iraq's Shi'ite south, has been relatively free of violence in the past year. The sectarian slaughter unleashed by the 2003 US invasion has largely subsided across Iraq but US and Iraqi authorities expect attacks to increase ahead of key parliamentary elections in March.
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