The bombings came two days after a chilling execution-style attack by gunmen who raided homes south of Baghdad, killing 24 people, many of them believed to be anti-Al-Qaeda fighters.
The rise in bloodshed after a relative lull deepened fears that insurgents are seizing on the political uncertainty after last month’s close parliamentary elections to sow further instability.
“The terrorists seized this time between the end of the elections and the forming of the government to target the political process,” said Civil Defense official Abdul-Rasoul Al-Zaidi.
Sunday’s blasts went off within minutes of each other — one near the Iranian Embassy and two others in an area that houses several embassies, including the Egyptian Consulate, and the German and Spanish Embassies, said Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the city’s Operations Command Center.
“These explosions targeted diplomatic missions,” Al-Moussawi said, adding the death toll was likely to rise. “It’s a terrorist act.”
The force of the blasts shook buildings and rattled windows miles away. AP Television News footage showed civilians outside the Iranian Embassy loading casualties onto police vehicles and ambulances. Stunned victims in bloody clothes fled the scene as smoke rose.
One man was cradling a small girl wearing a white dress in his arms. Hassan Karim, 32, who owns a clothing shop near one of the bombing sites, said the first blast shattered windows and knocked all the shelves off the walls. He ran outside after the second explosion just minutes later. “I saw children screaming while their mothers held their hands or clutched them to their chest,” he said. “Cars were crashing into each other in streets, trying to find a way to flee.”
Among the dead were the Egyptian mission’s Iraqi head of security and an Iraqi guard at the German Embassy.
Officials say they thwarted two additional attacks. Security forces shot and killed a man wearing a suicide belt in a fourth bomb-rigged car near the former German Embassy, which is now a bank in the capital’s Karrada district, home to several other diplomatic missions, Al-Moussawi said.
Another senior Iraqi security official, preferring anonymity, said a fifth bomber was captured on his way to the Mansour area where two of the explosions occurred.
The official said Iraqi forces were tipped off about a possible attack against diplomatic targets and had begun beefing up security precautions Saturday — measures he credited with keeping the embassies themselves from serious damage. “We were fortunate they weren’t able to reach their targets,” he said. It was not immediately clear whether any diplomatic staff were among the victims. Several Iraqi guards at the Egyptian Consulate and one Iraqi guard at the German Embassy were killed, authorities said.
Guards at the Egyptian Consulate opened fire on one of the attackers as he drove toward them, but were unable to stop him before the blast hit concrete barriers, Al-Moussawi said. Authorities said many of the victims were members of the Sons of Iraq, former insurgents who joined US forces to fight Al-Qaeda militants, helping to turn the tide of the war.
The Spanish government said one of the explosions caused “considerable damage” to its embassy, but injured no one.
“This is enough. We are tired of explosions, we do not feel safe,” said Jassim Mohammed, 39, who was wounded in the head, arm and leg. “We go out of our homes and we do not know whether we will come back or not.”
