Three large explosions shook central Baghdad yesterday, two of them near embassies, police said. As many as 15 people were believed to have been killed in the blasts. A police source said 12 people had been wounded.
Iraqi authorities had warned of a possible escalation of violence amid rising tension surrounding a March 7 parliamentary election that produced no clear winner.
An Interior Ministry source said two of the blasts were bombs that blew up in the Mansour district of west-central Baghdad, one of them near the German embassy.
PHOTO: AFP
Another law enforcement source said the third blast occurred near the Iranian embassy, not far from Baghdad’s International Zone, which houses many Iraqi government offices and the US embassy.
Live TV footage from the scene near the Iranian embassy showed streets filled with smoke and many wounded people. Police vehicles picked up the wounded to transport them to hospital.
On Saturday, gunmen trying to pass themselves off as US and Iraqi soldiers raided a Sunni village outside Baghdad and killed at least 24 people in an execution-style attack, apparently targeting a Sunni group that revolted against al-Qaeda in Iraq, authorities and witnesses said on Saturday.
The bloodshed late on Friday comes amid increasing concerns that insurgents will take advantage of Iraq’s political turmoil to further destabilize the country, nearly a month after parliamentary elections failed to give any candidate a decisive win. Many fear a drawn-out political debate could spill over into violence and complicate US efforts to speed up troop withdrawals in the coming months.
Details remained sketchy, but police said gunmen traveling in at least four cars raided three homes in Hawr Rijab, killing 19 men and five women after binding them in handcuffs.
Some of the victims, police said, were marched onto the roofs of their homes and slain there.
Some had broken arms and legs, indicating they had been tortured before they were shot, police said. One witness said many were so badly brutalized that they were “beyond recognition.”
At least seven people were found alive, bound with handcuffs, authorities said.
The killings were reminiscent of those that plagued Iraq at the height of the sectarian bloodshed of 2006 and 2007, when men, sometimes dressed in police or army uniforms, snatched people from their houses at night before killing them and dumping the bodies.
Similar violence still plagues the country, but it has ebbed sharply.
In November, gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms abducted and killed 13 people in the village of al-Saadan near the town of Abu Ghraib on Baghdad’s western outskirts.
One survivor said the gunmen gained entry to her home by speaking English and convincing her mother they were Americans on patrol.
“My mother thought they were Americans who came to search the house, that’s why she opened door,” said the woman, who ran to another room after seeing the attackers. Her mother and two brothers were killed.
“I heard four gunshots,” the woman said. “It was all over in a second.”
The woman did not give her name, but she agreed allow an AP Television News crew to tour her home, where blood was spattered on the white kitchen cabinets and pooling on the floors.
A senior Iraqi army official who arrived at the scene of the crime on Friday evening said witnesses told him the gunmen were wearing uniforms that resembled those of the US military, and that they tricked the residents by saying they were coming to ask them how they were faring in their village.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details publicly.
The U.S. military did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment. The US presence on Iraqi streets has been drastically reduced since the US withdrew from cities last summer, the first step toward a full withdrawal by the end of next year.
US raids of people’s homes were common in the years that followed the 2003 invasion that ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but the Americans have turned over authority to the Iraqis and no long have free rein in the country.
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