REPORT: At least 12 dead, 30 wounded in Baghdad’s Sadr City - police

At least 13 people are killed and 30 others wounded in a car bomb explosion in Baghdad's mainly Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City according to police and hospital officials.

This comes as Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki fired four of his top security officers for abandoning their "professional and military duty" a week after the fall of the northwest city of Mosul to Sunni militants, the government said.      

Top officers, including Lieutenant General Mehdi Sabah Ghawari, the top commander for Nineveh province where Sunni fighters have gained ground, were fired because they "failed to fulfill their professional and military duties", according to a government statement read out on state television.       

One of the commanders, Hidayat Abdulraheem, had fled a battle and would be referred to the military court to be tried in absentia, it said.

Also on Tuesday, Sunni Muslim militants attacked a northern Iraqi village inhabited by Shi'ite ethnic Turkmens but were repelled, police said, highlighting a spike in sectarian bloodshed after stunning advances by jihadi fighters.           

The militants were beaten back from the village of Basheer, 15 km (9 miles) south of the city of Kirkuk, after an hour of clashes with local militia and police forces assisted by forces from a nearby Kurdish autonomous region.            

Police said Kurdish forces had traveled to Basheer from Kirkuk to help fight a mutual enemy - Sunni militants who were using mortars and machine guns to hit the village.           

A senior Kurdish police brigadier was wounded and six of his bodyguards were killed in the clashes in Basheer, police said.            

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim, is seeking to repel the Sunni militants who have seized several cities in the northern half of Iraq over the past week.            

Maliki has asked Kurdish "Peshmerga" forces to help his campaign to repulse radical Sunni insurgents but the Kurds, who are suspicious of Baghdad, have also taken towns as Iraqi army forces have withdrawn from the north and west.        

Iraqi officials in Baghdad close to Maliki have accused the Kurds of exploiting the conflict for territorial gain.            

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other Sunni militants have swept through towns in the Tigris valley north of Baghdad in recent days but appeared to have halted their advance about an hour's drive from the capital on Sunday as they tightened their grip on the north.            

ISIL's surge may pose the biggest security crisis to Iraq since the worst of the sectarian bloodshed that followed the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Obama:

U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama had invited the leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives to the White House on Wednesday for a meeting on Iraq.      

He told reporters at the Capitol that he, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, House Speaker John Boehner and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had been invited. 

Iraq's Shi'ite-led cabinet blamed Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for promoting "genocide" in Iraq by backing Sunni militants, in a statement which could exacerbate the sectarian polarization in the Middle East.     

Iraq has been stunned by a sudden lightning advance by Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who captured the main city in the north, Mosul, a week ago and have since marched on towards Baghdad.          

Saudi Arabia funds and supplies Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria but denies it is behind ISIL. Nevertheless, Baghdad blames it for Sunni militancy in the region.         

"We hold them responsible for supporting these groups financially and morally, and for the outcome of that - which includes crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the destruction of Iraqi state institutions and historic and religious sites," the statement said.