30 killed, 168 wounded as three large explosions hit central Baghdad

Three car bombs in the Iraqi capital on Sunday killed at least 30 people and wounded 168, with foreigners among the casualties, a police source said. The bombings took place near the Iranian, Egyptian and German embassies.

The explosions hit the Iraqi capital two days after gunmen killed 24 people in a village just to the south.                                           

Iraqi authorities had warned of a possible escalation of violence due to rising tension surrounding a March 7 parliamentary election that produced no clear winner.                                           

An interior ministry source said two of the blasts were bombs which blew up in the Mansour district of west-central Baghdad, one of them near the German embassy.                                            

Another law enforcement source said the third blast occurred near the Iranian embassy, not far from the Baghdad's International Zone, which houses many Iraqi government offices and the US embassy.                                           
 

Live television 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 Friday gunmen invaded the village of Albusaifi south of Baghdad and killed 24 people, many of them execution-style with a gunshot to the head.                                           

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.