MOSUL, Iraq, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- At least 13 people were wounded in a car bomb explosion at a popular marketplace in a predominantly Christian town near the city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, on Monday, a provincial police source said.

    A booby-trapped car parked at a crowded marketplace in the town of Burtillah, some 40 km east of Mosul, detonated in the afternoon, wounding 13 people, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    Many Christian families living in Mosul, 400 km north of Baghdad, have resorted to the surrounding small Christian towns, including Burtillah, by a recent wave of violence that targeted the minority in the city.

    Unidentified militias and Islamic extremists have frequently targeted Christians since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, forcing tens of thousands to flee Iraq.

    Iraq's Christian community has been estimated at 3 percent of Iraq's roughly 30 million people, and has a significant presence in the Nineveh province, which has been the scene of major security crackdowns by U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces to uproot the insurgency that erupted shortly after the U.S.-led invasion.

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