A US marine and Iraqi police investigate a scene of car bombing just outside Fallujah, Iraq, 28 Dec 2008

Iraqi authorities say a car bomb exploded outside the central city of Fallujah Sunday, killing two civilians and wounding four more.

On Saturday, two car bombs exploded in Iraq, killing more than 25 people and wounding several others.

Iraqi police say one explosion occurred near a taxi and bus station in Baghdad's mostly Shi'ite district of Kadhimiya, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 50 others.

In a second explosion, police said an Iraqi soldier and two members of a local patrol were killed while trying to defuse a car bomb in the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad.

A report released Saturday shows Iraqi civilian deaths totaled more than eight-thousand this year, a sharp drop from 2006 and 2007 when a total of more than 48,000 civilians were killed.

The British non-governmental organization, Iraq Body Count, said the most dramatic drop in violence occurred in Baghdad.

The group says, in total, close to 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In other news, police say they killed a local al-Qaida leader who escaped from prison Friday in the city of Ramadi. Police sources say officers shot Imad Ahmed Farhan on Saturday at a house in Ramadi.

Two other men who escaped with Farhan are still at large.

The three militants broke out of the al-Fursan police station in Ramadi during a shootout that left 13 dead.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, which was once the heart of the Sunni insurgency against U.S.-led forces.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.